Harry Potter and the Three Rules
by Brent Dax
Summary: At age six, Harry Potter learned that he can't truly depend on anyone but himself. At age eleven, he was invited to join a world that wasn't quite expecting what it got.
1. Chapter 1: The Three Rules

If I owned Harry Potter, this story wouldn't start with a bullet list of random notes.

**A/N**: A few things to note about this fic before you start:

• I have five chapters written, and I may not go any further than that. I started this fic on a whim, and I may abandon it on a whim too.  
• Sorry.  
• I'm going to try not to duplicate Rowling's books, so I'll only lightly touch on parts that are very similar.  
• I'm attempting a strict single point of departure, with the point of departure being in the first scene of this chapter. Hopefully, everything else is the same as in the books (although I don't necessarily take outside-of-the-books statements as canonical), but I may screw things up.  
• Sorry.  
• I have a premise, but not really a proper plot. I have no real idea where this is going.  
• I'm a Harry/Hermione shipper, but I'm not averse to multi pairings, and they may actually suit the premise better. Again, I have no real idea where this is going.  
• Don't get too excited about the M rating. My current plans don't really require it—I just don't want to worry too much about something non-child-friendly slipping out.  
• I hate it when authors write a fic without knowing where it's going. I'm doing it anyway because I've been writing the fic where I _do_ know where it's going since well before _Deathly Hallows_ came out. I'm not even a quarter done with the first draft.  
• Did I mention I may abandon this fic on a whim?  
• Sorry.  
• On account of me being a delusional Harry/Hermione shipper, you may safely assume that the canon epilogue is not happening.  
• I'm sure as hell not saying "sorry" for that.  
• There are some OCs in this chapter. They don't matter much. This story is about canon characters.  
• **TRIGGER WARNING**: Vernon is physically abusive in this chapter. I doubt it will happen again. You should also expect this story to include blood and violence beyond what's portrayed in canon.

**Chapter One  
****The Three Rules****  
**

Harry Potter was six years old when he came up with his first rule.

He was staring up at Vernon, the knife he'd been chopping onions with lying forgotten at his feet. Vernon had his hand raised in a familiar pose, ready for the first slap in what was sure to be a major beating.

Harry had been hit many times before, and each time it happened, he'd hoped someone would stop it. He'd hope a neighbor would hear his cries. He'd hope a policeman would stop his uncle. He'd hope a teacher would notice his bruises. He'd hope someone from his real family—his parents, miraculously alive, or a long-lost uncle, or a godfather or a family friend—would show up and save him.

But it had never happened.

And so now, as he watched Vernon's hand descend, he hoped for something different.

As he braced for the blow, as he closed his eyes and cringed, he wished, with all his heart, that _he_ could somehow stop Vernon, somehow hurt him even worse than he was about to hurt Harry…

The shock of the hit never came. Instead, Vernon bellowed again—but this time in pain.

Harry opened his eyes and looked up. The big man was screaming, clutching at the vegetable knife that was protruding from his palm. Blood was dribbling down the blade; the bits of onion still clinging to it were turning red.

How had this happened?

_I did that,_ Harry realized with a start. _I wanted to stop him, and I did._

And as Vernon raised his other fist for a punch, as Harry_ wanted_ to shove him back against the wall—and somehow, to his astonishment, _did_—as Petunia came in and screamed, as Dudley lunged for him only to be desperately restrained by his mother, as Harry delivered his ultimatum—"You will _not_ touch me again"—and Vernon assented, as the Dursleys headed to the hospital to get Vernon's _kitchen accident_ treated—Harry Potter formulated his first rule.

_You can't count on anyone to protect you but you._

—

It was only a couple weeks later that Harry came up with his second rule.

Harry had been fast asleep when a pain in his gut awoke him. His eyes flew open. It was dark, but he could see a figure silhouetted in the door of his cupboard.

It was Vernon. He had a cricket bat.

Harry gasped and wheezed—Vernon had knocked the breath out of him—and Vernon raised the bat for another blow—

Harry _wanted to stop him_ as hard as he could and suddenly the middle third of the bat was a column of burning sawdust. Vernon overbalanced as he swung the handle back and he fell backwards, only to be hit in the face on the way down by the top third of the bat. He went down like a sack of bricks and didn't get up again; he'd been knocked out cold.

And as Harry caught his breath, as he waited for Vernon to come to, as he thought of a way to keep this from happening again—he would demand Dudley's second bedroom, he decided, and a set of locks strong enough to keep the Dursleys out at night, and maybe a small knife for him to carry in case Vernon needed another _lesson_—Harry Potter formulated his second rule.

_When you have power, use it to get things you'll need when you don't._

—

It was another two years before Harry came up with his third rule.

Things had gotten much better for him. Vernon had tried to attack him one more time, but Harry had not only delivered another demand—he and Petunia would feed him properly or else—he'd also said that the next attack would see him no longer doing any chores.

That had put a stop to it.

Vernon didn't hit him anymore; every time his anger was close to boiling over, he glanced down at the matching scars on his palm and the back of his hand and deflated. Petunia didn't shout at him when he didn't do a chore to her satisfaction, and even let him eat his share at meals. Even Dudley had gotten the message that Harry wasn't to be crossed, and kept his budding gang away from Harry.

Harry had also gotten Vernon to get him a new knife of some sort for each birthday and Christmas since then, just so he wouldn't forget.

Of course, that didn't mean everything was perfect. It seemed that, since the Dursleys could no longer beat the "unnaturalness" out of him (he assumed they meant his ability to change things by _wanting_ them, whatever it was), they were going to try to sweat it out of him instead. And with summer in full swing, there was nothing to keep them from crushing him with chores.

So Harry was outside weeding Aunt Petunia's azaleas when he saw Ellie scamper up a tree across the street.

Ellie was a short girl with a birthmark on her cheek who lived at Number Seven; he'd occasionally noticed her on Privet Drive or in his class. Only occasionally, though, because she seemed to have a gift for not being noticed. Teachers almost never called on her, and other students rarely spoke to her. She could sneak out of class to the loo while the teacher's back was turned, then sneak back in a few minutes later without her noticing. She could hover at the back of a group of kids being picked for teams, then slink away and climb a tree until the game was over. She could even slip into the middle of the lunch queue without anyone complaining.

Harry suspected he was the only person who realized this; years of living in Vernon and Dudley's house had taught him to see everything around him. He was a little bit jealous, to tell the truth—that talent for not being noticed could have saved him some trouble with the Dursleys.

That skill seemed to have failed her today, though, and an exposed Ellie was always a target. Today she looked even smaller than usual; she was in tears, her bright yellow sundress grass-stained and dirty. And even as Harry watched, Dudley and three of his _friends_ surrounded the tree and started shouting up at her.

"Awww, is little Patches scared?"

"Does she want her mommy?"

Harry remembered all the times he'd been tormented, by these boys and others, and hoped someone would come for him…

Harry brushed the soil off his hands and started crossing the street, reaching into the pocket of his baggy hand-me-down trousers to grasp his favorite Christmas present yet.

"Oh, look," Dudley's friend Piers said, "Scarhead is coming to rescue Patches—"

Harry swiftly drew the throwing knife and flung it in Dudley's direction.

Harry had pretty good aim, he'd discovered after he got the set of three throwing knives. But when he guided the blade with his mind, _wanted_ it to fly to where he was aiming, it was nearly perfect.

And, just as he'd _wanted it to_, the blade flew right past Dudley's head, just barely clipping his ear, before embedding itself an inch into the tree trunk with a _twang_.

The handle quivered. Dudley reached for his ear; his fingers came away with just a few drops of blood. The other boys stared at Harry with eyes wide as saucers. Dudley turned, his face white as a sheet.

Harry was already holding another knife by the blade, glaring at them with cold green eyes. "You will _not_ bother her again," Harry told them.

Dudley pissed himself, and the four boys ran.

"You can come down now," Harry called up, and Ellie dropped down to the ground.

"That was brilliant," she said in a quiet little voice. "Thank you."

Harry shrugged and pulled the knife out of the tree, wiping the few spots of Dudley's blood off on the inside of his shirt. "They used to do that to me," he said. "I couldn't let them do it to you, too."

She smiled uncertainly. "Could—could you show me how to do that?"

Harry glanced at the sun and sighed. "I have to get back to my chores, I think…"

"Maybe I can help," Ellie said.

Harry was startled. He looked at Ellie for a moment.

What was her game here?

At length, though, he finally said, "Sure."

She beamed, and they crossed back to Number Four's lawn.

And as they knelt down in the dirt together, as Harry taught her which plants were weeds, as Ellie wrinkled her nose and made a "blech!" sound when he told her what was in fertilizer, as they finished in record time and headed off together for a knife lesson, Harry Potter formulated his third rule.

_You can get help from people who need help._

—

Harry and Ellie became friends over the next few years. He showed her how to throw knives and stones and other objects with pinpoint accuracy, and though she didn't seem to have his knack for making things happen by _wanting_ them, she got pretty good at it. She reciprocated by showing him how to hide in plain sight—how to keep to the backs of crowds, how to watch for the moments when people were distracted, how to divert attention with his body language, how to dress in colors and combinations that wouldn't catch the eye, how to keep to the shadows, and above all, how to look like he knew exactly what he was doing no matter how he felt inside.

Harry found others who needed help from him, too. Jack, a tall, strong boy with an unfortunate stutter, showed them some of the karate he'd learned but was forbidden to use against anyone who didn't throw a punch first—how to fall without being hurt, how to kick and punch effectively, how to dodge and block the clumsy strikes of untrained fighters. Mark, tiny and slight, had a talent for finding and exploring the back alleys, maintenance corridors, crawlspaces, and even rooftops of the places he went; he taught them how to open things that were meant to be closed, how to walk, climb and crawl silently, how to spot entrances and exits and guess what was behind them, how to build and hold a map of a place in your head. Neither of them were really friends, but they both sought Harry out for the protection he could give them from Dudley's gang and the friendliness they could get nowhere else, and he was happy to learn and teach.

Harry was ten years old when Ellie's family moved away. She confessed her fear that she wouldn't find anybody to be friends with in her new home, so Harry told her to do what he did: find the people who could use her help and befriend them. She thought that it sounded like a good plan. They promised to write, but within a few months, the letters dwindled as she got wrapped up in the new friends she'd made, just the way Harry had suggested.

And so it was that when a letter, addressed to "Mr. H. Potter" in emerald ink on yellow parchment, fell through the mail slot at Number Four, Harry at first thought it was a special birthday card from Ellie. It turned out to be something else entirely.


	2. Chapter 2: The Professor

If I owned Harry Potter, you would have paid $7.99 for this story.

**Chapter Two  
****The Professor****  
**

Five days ago, Harry had received a very strange letter informing him that he had been accepted at a "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry".

There were three things about this letter that were strange. The first was that, so far as he knew, he had never applied to such a school. The second was that, so far as he knew, wizards and witches weren't real. And the third (he'd realized, once he'd penned a reply to this Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall asking for clarification) was that he was apparently supposed to reply using an owl.

No sooner had he wondered where he would get an owl, though, than one tapped on his bedroom window. Apparently Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall had anticipated this problem.

A flurry of correspondence later, and Professor McGonagall (as she'd told him to address her) had arranged for someone to meet with Harry that Saturday to explain the situation.

Vernon and Petunia had not been happy about this, but Harry had pointed out, as he twirled the F-S Fighting Knife in his hand that he'd gotten last Christmas, that they would be even less happy if they had less than twenty fingers between them.

And so Harry found himself coming down the stairs when, at twelve o'clock on the dot, the doorbell rang. Harry opened the door and was greeted by the oddest-looking person he'd ever met.

The man was tall and thin and very old. He wore a lavender suit, shoes with buckles instead of laces, a tie spangled with stars that Harry could swear were _moving_, and white hair and a beard that both reached his belt. Keen blue eyes seemed to X-ray him from behind half-moon glasses.

"Good afternoon. I am Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts. It's a pleasure to finally see you again, Harry."

Several things tried to come out of Harry's mouth at once, but Ellie's most important lesson came back to him, as it always did at times like this: _Always look like you know what you're doing._ So he quickly put together most of the things he wanted to say.

"It's nice to meet you. Come in—is it Headmaster? Professor? Or one of those titles from the letter—Mugwump, I think?"

"'Professor' is more than adequate," Professor Dumbledore said. "When you have as many titles as I do, there is always a danger that you'll forget to answer to one of them."

Which only strengthened Harry's desire to say the one thing he hadn't included in that sentence—_are you for real?_

Harry glanced towards the living room, then back at Dumbledore. He'd been planning to talk in there, but one look at the man and he realized that if Vernon came in, he'd either fly into a rage or have a stroke. And while it'd be interesting to see how a wizard handled such things, either one would probably delay their discussion.

"We can speak in my bedroom," Harry decided. "This way."

The two of them climbed the stairs—Professor Dumbledore was very spry despite his age—and came to Harry's door. Harry undid the lock with practiced ease, not noticing Dumbledore's curious look, and led him in.

The furniture in Harry's room was shabby; the mattress was lumpy, the desk dented, and the wardrobe didn't close properly. Besides the furniture, the only objects in the room were a few shelves of books and a dart board that was so thoroughly thrashed, Dumbledore would probably never guess Harry had _wanted it fixed_ at least a dozen times.

Harry realized he only had one chair, but just as he was turning to offer it to Dumbledore, the older man drew a stick from inside his jacket and flicked it. Instantly, a cushy red armchair was standing in the empty space before the door.

Harry gaped. Dumbledore chuckled as he settled into the armchair. "I do so enjoy seeing the wonder on a child's face the first time they see magic. Alas, I haven't introduced anyone myself since I became Headmaster."

"Erm, right," Harry said. "I suppose that answers my first question. So, these things we can do…they're magic?"

"They are indeed," Dumbledore said. "What sorts of things can you do, Harry?"

"Nothing like _that_, I mean, that was—" Harry realized he was babbling and took a deep breath. _Always look like you know what you're doing._ He also realized he was still standing, and moved to sit down. "I can move things by wanting them to move. If I throw something, I can make it hit where I want it to go. I can repair things"—Harry sat in his desk chair, which gave a nasty squeal, and he grimaced—"at least to some degree. I can fight back when people try to hurt me." An image swam to his mind—Vernon raising his hand, Harry closing his eyes, Vernon's pained cry, Harry looking up, the mix of horror and triumph as he saw the knife in Vernon's palm—then another—gasping for breath, Vernon's silhouette standing over him, half the cricket bat disintegrated—and Harry shook his head to clear it. "I even talked with a snake at the zoo a few months ago."

"Did you really?" Dumbledore's bushy eyebrows had risen far above the rims of his glasses. "That's quite the list, young man. And without a wand?"

"A…a wand, Professor?"

Dumbledore showed Harry his stick. Up close, Harry could see it was much more than a strip of dark wood; it was intricately carved, with everything from eldritch sigils to what looked like clusters of berries etched along its length. "A wand is a wizard's tool, Harry. It focuses and amplifies your magic, allowing you to cast spells more intricate or powerful than you could perform unaided. Most spells are cast by performing the proper gesture with your wand and speaking an appropriate incantation."

"You didn't use an…incantation when you created that chair, did you, sir?"

Dumbledore smiled. "You're a sharp one, aren't you? I am powerful enough that I can perform many spells silently. You probably will be too, Harry. The skills you mentioned—moving and guiding and repairing objects—are, though simple compared to conjuring a chair, far beyond what most wizards can do unaided. At Hogwarts, we will teach you the greater magics that can be performed with a wand, but you should take special care to maintain and grow the abilities you already have.

"As for the other skill you mentioned—speaking to snakes—I feel I must warn you. A person who can speak to snakes is called a Parselmouth, and wizards and witches have many unfounded superstitions about such people. I would not mention it to anyone you don't already trust."

Harry nodded, then paused for a moment. "Professor…if there are all these magical people in the world, why haven't I ever heard of them?"

"We hide ourselves, Harry. We have a law, the International Statute of Secrecy, that requires us to keep our existence from the Muggles."

"Muggles?"

"Non-magical people. No wizard or witch may reveal our existence to any Muggle, save close family members. We keep from performing magic in front of them, and we hide our buildings and communities from them with magic. When one of them does manage to see something magical, we erase their memory of the incident and send them on their way."

"But why?"

"Different wizards have different answers, Harry. Some say that the Muggles would pester us for magical solutions to their problems if they knew of us. Others"—he frowned here, as though he didn't like these _others_—"claim that Muggles are somehow beneath us, and that we oughtn't to associate with their sort."

"What do you think, sir?"

"I think," Dumbledore said, "that there are not very many wizards and witches in the world. Not one person in a thousand could use a wand to so much as make sparks, Harry. And only the most formidable of those could stand up to a single Muggle soldier, let alone an army. It is no coincidence that the Statute was introduced mere months after a Muggle with a flintlock pistol bested a wizard in a duel. If the Muggles ever did turn on us, all the magic we could muster would not spare us their wrath."

Harry decided to be very careful where he used his magic.

"Fortunately, the spells we hide ourselves with care not what technology the Muggles use; if they cannot see a building in person, they cannot see it through a camera. And the charms that expunge records on paper work just as well against their remarkable thinking machines. Maintaining our secrecy requires a great deal of work, Harry—a good portion of the Ministry of Magic is devoted to it—but it is not truly difficult."

"There's a Ministry of Magic?" Harry asked.

"Oh, yes. In Britain, the Minister and the directors of the various departments are appointed by the Wizengamot, which also passes laws and tries court cases. At the worldwide level, the International Confederation of Wizards settles disputes between magical governments and ensures everyone is enforcing secrecy."

And Dumbledore seemingly held important positions in both of those governments—unless "supreme mugwump" meant "court jester". "Sir…why are you here? Surely you have more important things to do than talk to an ordinary ten-year-old…wizard?"

The word felt right, Harry realized as he voiced it. He was a _wizard_.

Dumbledore sighed. "Alas, Harry, I'm afraid you are no ordinary ten-year-old wizard."

And so Dumbledore told Harry of Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters and their genocidal reign of terror.

"Though few truly wanted Voldemort to win, Harry, even fewer had the courage to stand against him. James and Lily Potter, your parents, were among them. Your father was a tremendous duelist, tricky and creative with preternatural reflexes, and your mother was one of the most powerful witches I'd ever met, and matched it with an amazing repertoire of magic; she had been the sort of student Hogwarts sees only once in a generation. Together, they were a force to be reckoned with. They even dueled Voldemort himself three times and survived, a record only I have exceeded.

"It was that third duel, I believe, which brought them to his attention. A wizard who had been friends with Lily once, before he took the Dark Mark, warned me that the Potters were being targeted for death. In other circumstances the Potters would have treated this as an opportunity, perhaps set an ambush—but Lily was with child, and even before you were born, they loved you too much to risk you."

Harry furiously blinked away his tears.

"Instead, they went into hiding behind the strongest protections we could devise. But it was not enough. A traitor allowed Voldemort past the protections, and at nine o'clock in the evening on Halloween 1981, he blasted open the front door to your house.

"From what we can tell, your parents were caught off guard. Neither was carrying their wand." (Harry made a mental note to _always_ carry his wand. And his knives, too.) "James tried to hold him off downstairs, while Lily ran went to your nursery to try to protect you. Voldemort killed James, then Lily, and then he turned to you. And then something strange happened."

"What?" Harry asked, ignoring the burning in his eyes.

"Voldemort had been using the Killing Curse. It's a spell that cannot be cast if you want to harm, or even to kill in self-defense; you have to be willing to _murder_ the victim, whether it's justified or not. Because of that, and because there is no known shield or counter-curse for it, use of the Killing Curse is punished by life imprisonment.

"But when he cast the Killing Curse at you, Harry, the spell rebounded. Voldemort, who cast the spell and should have been unharmed, vanished without a trace; and you, who had been the target and should have died, survived with only a cut upon your forehead. It has made you famous in our world—the child who struck down the Dark Lord at the height of his power, the boy who lived when all others died."

Harry reached up and touched the strange zigzagging scar.

"But…how?"

"I have no facts to answer you with, Harry, only theories. But your mother could have run, could have saved herself, and instead tried to protect you. That is the sort of action that can invoke Old Magics—powers far greater, and far more subtle, than what mere wands command."

Harry turned away from Dumbledore. By the time he turned back, wiping his eyes, Dumbledore was studying the books on his shelves.

"You have the beginnings of a fine personal library here, Harry."

"Thank you, sir."

"No fantasy novels, though?"

Harry shook his head. "The Dursleys don't approve of imagination."

"I see," Dumbledore said with a frown.

After a moment's silence, Harry said, "So what happens next?"

"If you accept your invitation to Hogwarts"—Harry nodded, and Dumbledore beamed— "then I will ask a member of our staff to meet your here and escort you to Diagon Alley, a magical shopping district in London. It will have to be on or after your birthday; you must be eleven to purchase a wand."

"July 31st, then," Harry said.

"Eight o'clock?"

"That sounds fine."

"Then there are two things I should give you." Dumbledore pulled a small golden key out of his pocket. "The first is the key to vault 687 at Gringotts Wizarding Bank. It is a trust vault set up by your parents, and should contain more than enough money to see you through your school years. On your seventeenth birthday, when you come of age in the wizarding world, keys for the Potter family vaults will appear within it. Be careful with this key—whoever holds it has the right to withdraw as much money as they wish."

Harry took the key from Dumbledore.

"You will most likely visit Gringotts early in your journey to Diagon Alley. While you're there, ask the teller to begin sending account statements to yourself instead of me. If he claims there is a fee for this service, he is trying to swindle you. Reiterate that you want one statement sent to you, not one to you and one to me, and he will have to comply."

Harry frowned. What kind of people were these bankers, anyway, to try to trick customers into paying unnecessary fees?

"The other thing"—Dumbledore withdrew a paper envelope from his pocket—"is your ticket for the Hogwarts Express. It leaves at eleven o'clock from King's Cross Station, London. I recommend you get there early so you have time to find a good cabin."

Harry took the envelope and looked inside. The ticket was on the same sort of parchment as his Hogwarts letter. "Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, sir?"

"It is hidden between Platforms Nine and Ten. Go to Platform Nine and look for what appears to be a bricked-up archway near the entrance. If you approach it with confidence, you will have no trouble passing through."

"Thank you, sir." He put both the key and the ticket in his desk.

"I believe that's all we have to discuss today, Harry, unless you have any questions."

Harry shook his head. "I'll show you out, then?"

"That would be very kind of you, Harry. Thank you."

Dumbledore made his chair disappear, and Harry led him downstairs. Harry paused as he was reaching for the door handle.

For the last five days, ever since Professor McGonagall had told him someone would be coming to meet with him, old fantasies, buried in the back of Harry's mind for five years, had started to come back unbidden. He had to ask…

"Professor…do I have to stay with the Dursleys?"

Dumbledore sighed. "They are your only family, Harry."

"Sir…they don't…hurt me anymore, not since I started defending myself, but…" Harry clenched his eyes shut, willing back the tears. "It's not right here. They're not my family; they're just my relatives."

Dumbledore looked at him sadly. "I'm sorry, Harry. There is nowhere else I can place you."

"Of-of course, sir. I should have known better."

"No, you should always ask for help when you need it. I'm sorry that I have none to offer this time."

Harry nodded, but inside, he was reminding himself: _You can't count on anyone to protect you but you._

"I shall see you at Hogwarts on September the First, then," Dumbledore said. "Remember to be ready to visit London on your birthday. I'm sure it will be quite the occasion. And good luck with your Sorting."

Harry was turning to open the door, puzzling over the word _Sorting_, when he heard a soft _pop!_ behind him. When he turned back, Professor Dumbledore was already gone.


	3. Chapter 3: The Alley

If I owned Harry Potter, these chapters wouldn't be coming out one at a time.

**A/N**: For those of you who loathe the Pit of Voles, this story is now being posted on Archive Of Our Own as well. My username there is "brentdax".

By the way, a fellow by the name of "Super bunny" posted a review I'd have loved to send a private response to, but they posted it as a guest, so I can't. Don't do that if you're going to say anything more substantial than the usual fanfiction_txt tweet—you lose the chance to hear little hints about the story, and worse, you drive me nuts when I want to tease you with little hints about the story and can't.

**Chapter Three  
****The Alley**

Dumbledore had been right—Harry's birthday had been quite the occasion. Fascinating and exciting, but also frustrating.

When Harry had opened the door at eight o'clock sharp, his first thought was that Dumbledore had sent a bear to collect him. But he quickly realized this wasn't a bear, but a man—a man twice as tall and five times as broad as any man Harry had ever met. He had introduced himself as Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.

Harry had been wondering how they were to get to this Diagon Alley—would they ride a magic carpet? Open a glowing doorway? Simply pop away like Professor Dumbledore had?—and was a bit miffed to find they'd be taking the train, but it did give him a chance to question Hagrid about his job while they shared a sticky chocolate birthday cake Hagrid had pulled out of his coat.

"Well, the groundskeepin' part's obvious 'nough. As fer the keys—there's three Keys o' Hogwarts. The Gate Key unlocks the Gates o' Hogwarts; with the Gates locked, yeh won' find a place safer. The Ward Key unlocks the ward room; inside the ward room, yeh can control all the spells on the castle. I hold on ter those two meself. The Headmaster's Key unlocks the Headmaster's Chambers; if he's sacked or quits, the key comes to me, an' I give it ter the next one. I can also take back the Headmaster's Key if I think 'e's hurtin' the kids."

Once they'd reached London—and fought their way through a crowd of well-wishers at the wizarding pub, The Leaky Cauldron—Harry'd had to fight tooth and nail every time he wanted to deviate from Hagrid's instructions. He had steered Harry away from browsing the bookstore, instructing him to get his assigned course books and nothing more; Harry had managed to get _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_, _Hogwarts: A History_, a guidebook titled _Magic for the Muggleborn_, and a book on magical government, but any attempt to get books about more advanced magic was rebuffed. Hagrid had also cut off the saleswitch at Mr. Strong's Boxes and Trunks as she was explaining about the special compartments she could add, insisting on an ordinary school trunk, and, though he was happy enough to browse a magical curio shop after lunch, he wouldn't let Harry buy a dagger with a collapsible blade.

On the other hand, after visiting both Harry's trust vault and a high-security Hogwarts vault, he did allow Harry to change some of his wizard gold to Muggle pounds at the bank (Harry had haggled with the goblins—oh, yes, the bank was run by _goblins!_—over the exchange rate), and at the robe shop, he'd picked up some dark grey casual robes in addition to his black school ones. Wizarding fashion seemed to favor some outlandish colors, but he suspected grey would still fade into the background, just as his friend Ellie had taught him. And Hagrid had even bought Harry an owl. The still-unnamed bird had beautiful snowy-white plumage; after checking with Hagrid, Harry had let her out of her cage to fly to Little Whinging herself, something he got the distinct impression she appreciated.

By the time they returned to Privet Drive, the moon was high and bright, and Harry was seething. If there was one thing the trip had underscored, it was that he was an important figure in this new world. He couldn't afford to walk into it blind—he had to be prepared!

Still, Harry had remained friendly with Hagrid, even as he pushed back as much as he could; there was no sense antagonizing the man, and it was always useful to have a friend with some authority. Harry watched Hagrid stride down the block; Hagrid waved as he turned the corner, and then he was gone.

Harry dragged his new trunk and bird cage past the living room, where he could hear the telly on, and up to his room, unlocked the door, and brought them inside. He opened the window for his new owl, put the cage on his desk, and set the trunk at the foot of his bed. Then he looked toward his pillow and started.

Upon his pillow lay a package, wrapped in red paper with a blue ribbon, and under that ribbon was a card on yellow parchment. Harry glanced at the door before remembering that he'd unlocked it when he came in. How had this gift gotten into the room?

He closed and locked the door, then picked up the package—it was soft and surprisingly light—and read the card. It said, in loopy handwriting:

_Your father left this in my possession before he died. He told me that your grandfather, Charlus, gave it to him on his eleventh birthday. Though James is no longer with us to do it himself, I believe it is time it was given to you._

_Use it well._

_Many happy returns._

There was no signature.

Eager to see what he'd gotten of his father's, Harry tore the wrapping in moments. Something slippery slid out of his hand and onto the bed, where its silvery folds glimmered in a shaft of moonlight.

Harry picked it up, noting the strange way the material seemed to flow in his fingers. It was a piece of clothing, he realized—not a full robe, but more like the winter cloak he had bought with his uniforms. He carried it to the wardrobe and opened the door to reveal a cracked mirror; then he threw the cloak over his shoulders to see how he looked.

And he yelped.

His torso had disappeared!

He reached down to touch his hands to his chest and was relieved to still feel it underneath the oddly flowing fabric. His body was still there, it was just…

_Invisible…_

Quickly, Harry pulled his arms under the fabric, and they disappeared too, leaving just his head floating in the air. He grabbed the inside of the cloak and lifted it, pulling it over his head, and his reflection vanished completely.

This could be _very_ useful.

In fact, between this cloak and the unobtrusive robes he'd bought earlier, he suspected he could find a way around Hagrid's interference…

Harry shrugged the cloak off and hung it in the wardrobe; then he slipped downstairs to ask Vernon for a lift to King's Cross.

—

The cloak opened up opportunities for Harry that he'd never had before. Each morning he dressed, tucked one of his new books into his rucksack, threw his magic cloak over himself, and snuck out of Number Four. A few blocks away, he would duck into an alley and stuff the cloak into his rucksack. With the Dursleys not seeing him, they had no opportunity to assign him chores, and he was free to spend his days however he pleased.

He mainly spent them reading his new books. His textbooks were all very interesting, although he didn't really understand half of what they were talking about; he suspected that would come in the classroom. _Magic for the Muggleborn_ taught him lots of basic things about magical life, but from the examples they used, he suspected the author had never been around Muggles for more than ten minutes at time. _Hogwarts: A History_ was a dry book on an interesting subject; Harry skimmed most of it, but it only made him more excited for term to start. _The Ministry of Magnates_ was an informative, scathing, outrageous, and hilarious critique of magical government and the people in it; if half the things in it were true, it was no wonder the author had adopted the pseudonym "The Wizard of Oz", because someone would surely have hunted him down otherwise. _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ was fascinating, but when he got to the end and discovered that Dumbledore had taken him from Godric's Hollow to a secret wing of Hogwarts for intensive magical training, he was left wondering how much of what he'd just read was actually true. Nevertheless, he had learned from the book that he was probably sneaking out every morning under an Invisibility Cloak.

Now, though, his month-long wait was over. Harry had released his owl, now christened Hedwig, to meet him at his destination; the hated cage would stay behind at Privet Drive. Vernon had driven him to London, brought him to King's Cross, and glared at him as he pulled his trunk out of the boot and into the station.

It was ten o'clock on August 31st.

Harry spotted a sign for Platform Nine, but that wasn't his destination today. Instead, he headed for the Underground. He bought a ticket with some of the Muggle money he'd changed at Gringotts and got on a train for Brixton. It only took one line change to get to Charing Cross, and from there, he followed the path Hagrid had shown him to the Leaky Cauldron.

This was going to be the trickiest part—Harry was still wearing Dudley's castoffs (though he'd picked the most unobtrusive colors he could), and from what he'd seen with Hagrid, every entrance to the Cauldron drew at least a little attention. He brushed his fringe down over his scar as much as he could, took a deep breath, adopted his best _nothing-to-see-here_ body language, and stepped through the door.

He did get a few glances, but nobody recognized him, at least not backlit by the street. He pulled his trunk to the bar, where he ran into an unexpected obstacle.

"Well," Tom the barman sad, "if it isn't Mister—"

"Evans," Harry blurted. Tom stared at him; Harry tipped his head towards the other patrons. "Harry Evans."

"Right," Tom said, tapping the side of his nose. Something tense in Harry's chest unclenched; the barman was cannier than he'd thought. "What can I do for you, Mr. Evans?"

"I was wondering if I could have a room for the night," Harry said. "Don't want to miss the Express tomorrow."

Gold changed hands, then a key. Tom cast a spell on Harry's trunk and it followed them upstairs.

"No guardians with you today, Harry?" Tom asked on the way.

"No. They're Muggles, you see, and they're a bit nervous about our world."

Tom gave him a searching look. "If you ever need a place to stay for a couple weeks—well, you wouldn't be the first Hogwarts student from a Muggle household I've put up."

"Thank you," Harry said, and he meant it. Of course, Tom would get paid for helping him, Harry realized; that was probably why he offered, but it didn't make that offer any less useful.

Harry changed into his gray casual robes, then threw the Invisibility Cloak over his shoulders and headed down to the bar. A few minutes later, he followed a pair of old witches into the alley.

His first stop was Gringotts. He wasn't sure they would like an invisible person entering their bank, so he hid behind one of the columns that flanked the entrance and whipped off the Cloak, stuffing it into his rucksack. Then he walked in, giving the goblin guards—who had been staring at him ever since he appeared from nowhere—respectful nods.

A half hour later and a few pounds of gold heavier, Harry whipped off his cloak, rounded a corner, and stepped into the Mr. Strong's. The only other person in the shop was the same saleswitch he'd seen last time.

"Oh, hello again, Mr. Potter!" she greeted him.

"Hello ma'am," he said politely. "I'm afraid we were in a bit of a hurry last time, but I was really curious about those options you were talking about…"

From what she described, it sounded like he could get an entire mansion in his trunk, complete with a sunroom with windows charmed to look like a tropical paradise. That was far more than he'd need, though—not to mention far more than he could afford. Instead, he opted to get the main compartment enlarged to the size of a closet, and to get a second compartment with an Ever-Expanding Bookcase. He also got a secret compartment put in—behind the bookcase was a small, heavily warded storage space, which she said would be protected by both a secret book and a portrait (though Harry had no idea how a portrait could protect anything). Nothing could see into it, she claimed, and although he wasn't sure that _nothing_ could, it was probably adequate for a boarding school. Having already hauled his trunk across half of London, he was eager to pay for a permanent Featherweight Charm, too.

Harry was pleased to learn that, instead of selling him a new trunk, the store could retrofit these features into his old one. If he left the key with her, she told him, she would have the elves pick up his trunk and return it when they were through.

"Wait, these…elves can just take anything no matter where it is?" Harry asked.

She chuckled. "Only with your permission, Mr. Potter. A house elf that is bound to a wizard is also bound by wizard laws."

Harry's next stop was Flourish and Blotts, where house elves were the newest addition to a large list of subjects he wanted books on. Harry didn't love books like a few of the students in his school had, but he thought they were dead useful—fiction books were better entertainment than the shows Dudley liked on the telly, and nonfiction books taught him things no human expert would have the time or inclination to. Without a lucky discovery in a public library one afternoon, he would never have learned to throw knives properly.

Harry's first stop was the books on the war with Voldemort—he bought one copy of each. He also picked up a few books of curses and other fighting spells, a directory of British owl-order businesses, and a tiny monograph on house elves that looked like it had been in the store longer than the shelf it was sitting on. Thinking of the Invisibility Cloak in his bag, he looked through a shelf of books on upkeep of magical objects until he found one that included them; then he added a book on concealment magic to his basket.

And so he went through the store, building a small but (at least as far as an untrained eleven-year-old could tell) practical library for himself. He was reaching for a copy of _Notable Magical Names of Our Time_ when his hand bumped into someone else's.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said at the same time as the hand's owner. They looked at each other and both started laughing.

The girl he'd bumped into was a little taller than him, with bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth. She was dressed in Muggle clothes—a blue blouse and nearly floor-length black skirt—and carrying a basket that was absolutely overflowing with books.

"I should have looked where I was reaching," Harry said. "Are you going to Hogwarts too?"

"Oh, yes," the girl said, and words began spilling from her mouth in a torrent of information: "I just wanted to pick up some reading for the train—I've already learned all the course books by heart, but it's all so new to me, nobody in my family's magic at all, you see, so I thought I should make sure I have the requisite background knowledge, I mean, most of the students have known about magic for _years_ and I only learned about it in June—I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?"

It took Harry a moment to respond; by the time she'd finished speaking, his brain had only just reached the phrase _requisite background knowledge_. "Erm, I'm Harry. Harry Potter."

"Are you really?" Hermione asked. "I've read about you, of course, you're in _Modern Magical History_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_."

"Well, I've only read _Rise and Fall_, and at least some of the stuff in it is inaccurate—I only found out about the magical world when I got my Hogwarts letter last month, so I certainly wasn't Dumbledore's secret apprentice, and I had no part in brokering any peace treaty with the centaurs of Laconia, wherever _that_ is."

"It's in Greece," Hermione said absently, frowning to herself. "_Rise and Fall_ did seem a little more…_exciting_ than _Modern Magical History_. I assumed it just included different details, though."

Harry shrugged. "In any case, I'm getting a bunch of books about the war to see how much I can actually confirm." And Harry showed her some of his selections, and she returned the favor, and then they started browsing the bookshelves together, chatting about the books they were looking at ("But how would you even read an _Invisible Book of Invisibility_?") and their earlier trips to Diagon Alley ("—she wouldn't even let me look at the _titles_ in this section last time—") and what they'd both read about the magical world ("—_The Ministry of Magnates_ said they were lying about being bewitched, though—") and people they'd met ("Is he really mad? _Echoes of Grindelwald's War_ said so, but _Modern Magical History_ claims it's an act—") and their lives before magic ("—but then one of the guards looked out the window and saw me clinging to the gutter—") and the most interesting magic they'd seen yet ("I'd sell everything I own to get a trunk with a library in it—but oh, then I wouldn't have any books to put in—") and, of course, Hogwarts ("—come off it, they can't possibly expect you to cast any spells during the Sorting, they haven't even taught you anything yet—").

Eventually, Hermione's parents came over and told her they needed to go. After she introduced them to Harry (he stumbled over calling them both "Doctor Granger", and Hermione's mother laughingly replied that he'd just demonstrated why he had to call them Lance and Jane), they walked to the check-out stand; there were two clerks, but one of them was arguing with two old warlocks about whether the book they wanted to return was burnt or merely singed. "Ladies first," Harry said, and Hermione and her parents went to the other clerk.

As he waited, Harry thought about Hermione. There was no doubt she was very smart—much smarter than him. She was definitely straight-laced, but she seemed so fascinated by his adventures with his friends, even as she scolded him for them, that he figured he could get her to loosen up. And when she'd talked about her life before Hogwarts, she'd never mentioned having any friends—he suspected she'd been as lonely as Ellie and Jack and Mark and he before they'd found each other, maybe even more so.

_You can get help from people who need help._

He had no doubt he could befriend her…

Though as the warlocks cleared out, and Harry tried to get a starstruck clerk to ring up his purchases, it occurred to him there was another option. In the Muggle world, he was "that awful Potter boy", the one who dressed in funny clothes and spent his time with the weird kids. But in the wizarding world, he was the Boy Who Lived. Everybody would want to be his friend—he didn't have to gather up the kids who had nobody else…

"Harry! Over here!"

He picked up his bundle of books and looked to Hermione. Her father was lowering her own, much larger, bundle into a rucksack that seemed much too small to fit them all. (Harry made a mental note to pick up one of those bags.)

The thing was, though, he _liked_ Hermione. Sure, she spent too much time reading, and judging by how she'd lingered over the planners she'd probably be a nightmare around exam time, but she was, in her own way, rather fun.

_Either way_, he decided as he walked over to her family, _I'll keep her_.

"Thanks for shopping with me today," Hermione said shyly. "It was fun."

"Me too," Harry said. "I had a great time."

_Now to really catch her attention._ Hermione seemed a curious sort of girl, and Harry had learned years ago, as he taught another girl how to use the sorts of knives she wasn't even allowed to touch, that nothing bound new friends together quite like a shared secret.

Harry stepped to the side a bit, so he would be blocked from most of the store by one of the shelves, and swung his rucksack off his back.

"Harry?" she asked, brow furrowing.

He reached into his pack and withdrew his silvery Invisibility Cloak.

"What is _that_?"

"A necessity for any Boy Who Lived," he said with a cheeky grin, and swung it over his shoulders.

All three Grangers gasped.

"I'll show you on the train tomorrow," Harry said from thin air. He was gone before she could agree—he didn't need to hear her response to know what it would be.

—

Once he'd left Flourish and Blotts, Harry headed back to the Cauldron, ordered lunch from the bar, and went up to his room.

"Hedwig!"

The owl, who was perched on one of the posts at the corners of his bed, barked a greeting and swooped down to land on his shoulder.

Harry's trunk was still missing, so he set the bundle of books on the bed and started sorting them out. He turned at a knock on the open door behind him; Tom was standing in it with a tray of steak pie.

"Your lunch, Mr., er, Evans."

"Thanks, Tom. Just put it on the desk, yeah?"

Tom did and then left, closing the door behind him. Hedwig flew over to the desk, landing beside the plate; Harry picked up his new book on magical items and sat down to lunch. He skimmed the book as he read, occasionally picking some steak out of his pie and feeding it to Hedwig.

After lunch, Harry snuck back into Diagon Alley and started exploring the most interesting looking shops he could find. He was lucky he'd looked at the book over lunch, for when he saw a mokeskin pouch in a secondhand shop for only two Galleons, he knew to snatch it up. He also got a Bottomless Backpack like Hermione's, that brilliant knife he'd seen when he was shopping with Hagrid, a perch for Hedwig with a water tray, and a belt holster and polishing kit for his wand (the latter had been recommended by his book).

Then, to prepare for his last mission of the day, he went back to Madam Malkin's. He bought several more sets of casual robes, but he also bought a hat, one that would cover his scar without being too tall or outlandish.

He stopped back at his room to drop off the clothes and backpacks, moved his new knife into the mokeskin pouch hanging from his neck, and put his new hat on. He set up Hedwig's new perch and filled her water dish; she butted her head against his cheek and swooped to her new home for a drink. Then he threw the Cloak back over himself and headed for the entrance to Knockturn Alley.

_The Ministry of Magnates_ had mentioned this place, noting that the only way it could possibly be so bad was if the Aurors (a kind of elite police force, he'd read) meant to patrol it were being paid to look the other way. The glimpses he'd caught of it earlier today had suggested it was too dark and narrow to use his Cloak effectively—someone would surely bump into him. So he'd have to do this the other way.

He ducked into the doorway of an apartment building near the entrance, took off the Cloak, and stuffed it into his mokeskin pouch. Then he drew one of his throwing knives and palmed it in his left hand.

And finally, he built a façade with his body language, just as Ellie had taught him.

_My presence is not worth any special notice. I am not afraid to be here. I am not an easy victim. I can take care of myself._

He squared his shoulders and stepped into Knockturn Alley. And as he navigated the twisted street, nobody bothered him.

—

If Diagon Alley had been eye-popping, Knockturn Alley was stomach-churning. There were shrunken heads on display in a cart and dog skeletons scratching at the doors of kennels in a shop window. An old witch with disgusting teeth seemed to be selling whole human fingernails in front of a building offering unspecified "entertainment" using something called "Polyjuice Potion".

Even so, there was an awful lot of interesting stuff in Knockturn Alley. An apothecary carried hundreds of ingredients he hadn't seen in the one on Diagon Alley, and some of them seemed to be merely rare, not revolting. A shop called Borgin and Burkes had a variety of apparently one-of-a-kind objects, including some rare books and a knife imbued with the venom of something called a basilisk. A small boutique, squeezed in next to a shop with a display of horrible giant spiders, displayed a set of vicious-looking, incredibly well-crafted daggers in the window that Harry gawked at for several moments; a sign in the window said:

AWLTHROW'S ARMORY  
Purveyor of fine goblin-made weapons  
Visits by appointment only

Most of what he saw he simply noted for later; he didn't know what a lot of it was yet, and wasn't about to buy anything from such a shady-looking area until he was sure it wouldn't kill him. The sole exception was a book he found in a secondhand shop.

It was titled _Ninety-Nine Charms the Ministry Doesn't Want You To Know_.

—

When Harry returned to his room that night, his trunk was at the foot of his bed; on top of it was a pair of heavy silver keys on a ring. Unlike a Muggle keyring, this one was a loop of solid silver, but when he touched his Gringotts key to the metal, it passed through the ring as though it were smoke. Harry added the keys to his bedroom and the front door of Number Four to the ring, too, before turning the first of the silver trunk keys in the trunk's lock.

When he opened the lid, Harry found that his clothes had been hung from a rod on the right end of the trunk and were dangling towards the left end. Below them, most of his other belongings were neatly arranged on shelves. He poked his head into the trunk, and found that the space inside it extended well past the front and back of the trunk.

"I love magic," he murmured. He grabbed the rest of his knives—he'd packed his whole collection—off the shelves and closed the trunk, then reopened it with the second key.

The bookcase within had two shelves, each divided into two sections. Each divider had a wooden handle on it. The whole bookcase was expertly crafted from pine; characters Harry didn't recognize were carved on the faces, and much to his fascination, they silently acted out scenes.

The books he'd brought with him from Privet Drive were arranged within; they barely filled one section of one shelf. Harry started adding the books he'd purchased at Flourish and Blotts. When he ran out of room, he pulled one of the handles to the right, and the entire bookcase slid to the side, revealing more empty bookshelves (with no carvings, he noticed). He put the last few books on these shelves, watching as figures started to appear in the woodwork (perhaps they were drawn from the books shelved there?), then pulled to the right again. The first shelf slid in again, as though the entire bookcase were a lazy Susan.

Mixed in among his original purchases, Harry spotted one he hadn't bought: a brown leather-bound volume titled _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_. Recognizing the title, he picked up the book and re-shelved it upside down.

Something clicked behind the bookcase, and the entire case slid down. Behind it, he found a painting of an elderly black-haired couple.

The first thing that he noticed was that, like the bookshelf carvings and Professor Dumbledore's tie, the painting _moved_. The people depicted in it seemed almost alive.

The second thing he noticed was that the man in the portrait had the same messy black hair he did, and the woman had his nose.

The third thing he noticed was that the subjects of the painting could _speak_.

"Hello, young man! I'm a portrait of Charlus Potter, and this is my wife, Dorea. We'll be guarding your secret compartment."

Harry looked at him with wide eyes, his skin white as a sheet.

"G-grandfather?"

—

**A/N**: It's worth noting that Harry did not meet Malfoy at Madam Malkin's; he took more time at Gringotts than in canon, so Malfoy had already finished up by the time Harry arrived. Madam Malkin's poor assistant took the full brunt of his asshattery instead.

One more thing: This fic is currently unbetaed, so I could use some help in that department. Obviously my spelling and grammar are at least decent, so I'm more interested in help with Britpicking, characterization, not letting this story teeter into an abyss of clichés, etc.


	4. Chapter 4: The Photograph

If I owned Harry Potter, this chapter probably wouldn't mention nudity.

**A/N**: If you read Chapter Three in the first three or four days it was up, I've made a small, surgical revision to better explain Harry's frustration with Hagrid after returning from Diagon Alley. There's no pressing need to read it, but if you felt like the return to Diagon Alley was a bit gratuitous, you may find that it helps.

In the first chapter, I stated I had five chapters written and didn't know if I would continue. Well, I have continued writing, and I now have drafts through Chapter Seven. (They aren't publishable yet, and I keep revising earlier chapters as I write later ones, so they'll continue to be released one at a time.) I still don't make any promises that I won't drop this with no warning, but progress has been continuing apace, and so far, I've enjoyed both the writing and the reviews I've been getting from all of you.

(By the way, if I don't split it in half, Chapter Seven is going to be _awesome_.)

**Chapter Four  
****The Photograph****  
**

After he had put his knives and illegal charms book in the secret compartment, Harry and the portrait of his grandparents talked late into the night.

The first thing he'd asked them about was how they'd ended up in his trunk. It turned out that the Potters had been quite the businesspeople, and after their deaths, Samson Strong had commissioned a portrait of his shrewdest investors so he could keep asking their advice.

"When one of his employees said she'd just sold a trunk to Harry Potter and wanted to use our portrait to guard something inside it, though, he couldn't say no," Dorea said.

_Why not?_ Harry wanted to ask. What was this man thinking when he gave a boy he didn't know something he found so valuable?

After a bit of thought, Harry came up with a couple ideas: perhaps he'd done it out of loyalty to his old investors, or perhaps he wanted to ingratiate himself to the Boy Who Lived.

In either case, Harry decided to send a thank-you note later.

The rest of the evening had been spent in deep discussion of the Potters. The Cloak, Harry had learned, had been in the family for generations. Even Charlus didn't know how many Potter fathers had given it to their eldest son on the day he received his first wand. Apparently Invisibility Cloaks were forbidden at Hogwarts, but there was some kind of exception for family heirlooms: as long as Harry didn't try to hurt someone using it, the staff couldn't take it away from him.

Mostly, though, they had talked about his parents. Charlus and Dorea had doted on their only son, and had been quite taken with the woman he fell in love with. And though they had never gotten to meet Harry in person—James and Lily had already been in hiding when he was born—they'd spent hours cooing over the photos James's friends had brought them.

They'd ignored Harry's eyelids drooping, but when he gave a jaw-cracking yawn, they'd told him it was time for him to go to bed. "We can talk again any time you'd like," Dorea told him.

"I'm sorry," he'd told them. "It must be boring guarding a secret compartment all the time…"

"Don't worry," Charlus had said. "Samson wasn't the only person who owned a portrait of us; we can travel to our other frames. Just give us a shout if we're not in this frame—we'll be able to hear you no matter where we are."

And so Harry had pressed down on the top of the bookcase sitting below their portrait, just as they'd instructed him to. It slid back into place with another click; _Beedle the Bard_, the book he had shelved upside-down to reveal the secret compartment, was back in its proper orientation. He closed the trunk and went to bed.

Now it was the next morning, and Harry was unexpectedly in a hurry.

He'd awoken at seven, figuring that would give him plenty of time: a half-hour to shower and dress, a half-hour for breakfast, an hour to get to King's Cross, and he'd be there two whole hours early. That had all gone out the window when Hedwig fluttered in through it, carrying a letter with a Gringotts seal on the back.

It was his first bank statement, and besides his trust vault and the Potter family vaults, it listed a vault for "post sorting, curse-breaking, and storage". The inventory of that vault included eye-popping numbers of letters, items of clothing, and magical objects, plus more books than he owned himself, even including the titles at Privet Drive.

But most importantly, it said there were photographs. Harry had realized with a jolt that some of them might be of his parents.

So instead of pulling his now-lightened trunk out the front entrance to Muggle London, he was carrying it out the back entrance and all the way down the Alley to Gringotts.

Much to his irritation, the goblins acted like, well, every other goblin he'd met so far. They tried to charge him a fee for the "inspection visit", then when he pointed out that his statement had said there was no fee to withdraw items from the vault, they'd acted all surprised that he intended to actually put anything in the trunk he was pulling behind him. Then they'd tried to charge him to carry his trunk to the vault; he'd scoffed and set it in the empty cart seat beside him.

When he finally got down to the postal vault, he gasped. It was an enormous space, like a warehouse hewn from stone instead of built from steel. On the left side, dozens of filing cabinets contained every letter he'd ever received, apparently organized by date and sender in some sort of grid. In front of him, racks of clothes were neatly hung, sorted by size and type. To his right, rows of shelves held items of every size and description. High overhead, shafts of sunlight streamed through a series of narrow tunnels to the surface, painting bright rectangles on the floor of the gloomy room; even as Harry watched, a shadow blotted one out, and a barn owl emerged from the center shaft, swooping down to a perch.

Harry turned to the goblin in charge of his mail sorting. "This is an impressive operation."

"Thank you," Inkeye said.

"If I provided you with a form letter, could you send it to everyone who's mailed something to this vault?"

"For a price," Inkeye agreed.

The price he proposed, though, was one hundred Galleons. Harry balked, then spent the next fifteen minutes haggling, his irritation growing with Inkeye's toothy grin. In the end, he talked the goblin down to nineteen Galleons, sixteen Sickles and twenty-eight Knuts.

All this had taken so much time that he had to shelve the books in his trunk without even glancing at the titles; he quickly sorted through the clothes, putting a few things that looked to be about the right size in his trunk's closet compartment and leaving the rest, and stuffed the packets of photos into his mokeskin pouch unopened. It all took far too much time and far too much bartering on a morning when he was in a hurry.

The strange thing was, he got the sense that the more he argued and fought with the goblins, the more they _liked_ him.

Even with all that, he still reached the Tube station at nine-thirty. Unfortunately, there was some kind of horrible problem on the Victoria Line, and he'd had to backtrack to Leicester Square to catch the Picadilly Line instead, then pull his trunk through what seemed like miles of underground tunnels to reach the train station. _Then_ he'd had to find Platform Nine, which was nowhere near Platform Eight, and when all was said and done, he'd reached Platform Nine and Three-Quarters with only minutes to spare.

Then he'd stopped and stared at the gorgeous scarlet engine, a thing out of a dream, for two whole minutes until the train blew its whistle. He ran through clouds of steam, pressed through crowds of parents and children, and felt the train start to lurch out of the station mere seconds after he set foot upon it.

Harry started pulling his trunk down the corridor, a bit unsteadily in the moving train, looking for Hermione. He found her in a compartment with three boys looming over her.

The smallest boy, the one in the middle, was mid-sentence when Harry arrived; all he heard was "—move if you know what's best—"

"Is there a problem here?" Harry said, stepping into the compartment.

The three boys turned to look at Harry. The two boys on either end looked thickset and mean, but probably none too bright; the boy in the middle was smaller, with blond hair and a pale, pointed face. "Just making sure this witch knows her place," the pale boy drawled. "She seems to think this compartment is hers. You're Harry Potter, aren't you?"

"Yes," Harry said, glancing to Hermione. She looked small and frightened; it was a look he'd seen many times before, most memorably on a girl climbing a tree across the street years before.

"I thought so. This is Crabbe and this is Goyle," the pale boy said, carelessly indicating the boys next to him. "And my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

Hermione stifled a giggle. Draco Malfoy looked at her.

"Think my name's funny, do you? You shouldn't even be on this train to hear it, not with your filthy background."

Malfoy turned back to Harry. "You'll soon find out some wizards don't have the heritage to back up their powers, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

And Malfoy offered his hand.

Harry recognized the surname from _The Ministry of Magnates_—Lucius Malfoy was one of the title characters, a wealthy, powerful man whose sterling reputation had fully recovered once it was "confirmed" that he'd been forced into Voldemort's thrall. Malfoy, Harry realized, would probably be a popular boy, at least in some circles.

But he was also a bully. He was Dudley Dursley with a wand and a diet. And Harry knew how to handle bullies.

"Malfoy…your father is Lucius Malfoy, I take it?"

"That's right," Malfoy preened.

Harry smiled and took his hand, and as he shook it, he said, "Then I guess you'll want to thank me, right?"

"Tha-thank you?" Draco stuttered out. Harry risked a glance at Hermione; she looked half-crushed, half-confused.

"Well, yeah," Harry said, still smiling sweetly. "I mean, maybe your father didn't like talking about those long, dark years when he was bewitched by Voldemort—"

Draco's hand jerked in Harry's, but Harry didn't let go. "You said the Dark Lord's name!"

"Well, of course I did," Harry said. Dumbledore had mentioned that most wizards didn't, and Hagrid had started every time Harry used it, but Harry affected puzzlement. "I killed him, after all. But think about those terrible years," Harry said, his voice going soft in sympathy, "committing one atrocity after another…torturing dozens of people…killing innocent witches and wizards…marrying your mother…" Harry's smile grew into a smirk, and his grip tightened, though his voice stayed as soft as before. "…siring a pathetic excuse for a son so thick that he tried to bully one Muggleborn witch and then immediately befriend the son of another…and powerless to stop any of those horrible things from happening until I freed him…"

Malfoy didn't go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his cheeks. He tore his hand from Harry's. "I'd be careful if I were you, Potter. Unless you're a bit politer you'll go the same way as your parents. They didn't respect their betters either."

Harry narrowed his eyes.

"Who left a trunk obstructing the corridor?" a voice behind Harry said.

Harry spun around. A much older boy with a shock of red hair was standing at the door. He was already in his black Hogwarts robes, and a shiny gold badge was pinned to his chest.

Harry recognized the badge from _Hogwarts: A History_—this boy was a prefect. And that meant— "I'm sorry," Harry said to the prefect. "I was carrying it when I saw these—"

"We were just leaving," Draco Malfoy interrupted. He shoved past Harry and rushed out of the compartment, Crabbe and Goyle following behind.

"No running in the corridors!" the prefect yelled, chasing after them.

Harry grabbed his trunk and pulled it in, closing the compartment door behind him. He lifted it into the luggage rack, then sat down across from Hermione.

She was staring at him with wide eyes.

"Erm, sorry about that. I—"

She launched herself across the compartment and into his lap, hugging him tightly.

Harry stiffened in her arms. He had never been hugged before; Ellie was never a hugger, and he hadn't known anyone else before who might have wanted to.

"Thank you," Hermione said thickly.

Harry patted the back of her head.

It was actually rather nice.

—

Once Hermione had let him go, she quickly asked about his disappearing act in Diagon Alley.

"It's an Invisibility Cloak, isn't it? _Ignotius's Index of Occult Objects_ had an entry on them…"

He showed her the Cloak, and they took turns trying it on for each other. As he were putting it away, Harry heard a knock on the door. Hermione opened it, and they found a food trolley with such an interesting assortment of candies, Harry instantly decided he'd erred in giving the sweets shops in Diagon Alley a miss.

Hermione was reluctant to get anything, thanks to her dentist parents, but Harry ignored her, bought some of everything, and then coaxed her into trying a few things. Soon, they were tearing open packets with abandon.

"You don't suppose they're actual frogs, do you?" Hermione said, peering at a boxed Chocolate Frog.

"I doubt it," Harry said. "I mean, wizards in general seem a little barmy, but they're not Frenchmen_._"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I happen to like France," she said as she opened the box, and then she let out an "eep!" as the Chocolate Frog leapt into her lap.

"Well, what's the problem, then?" Harry asked reasonably.

Hermione giggled as she pinned the frog to her lap, waiting to see if it would stop moving.

Later, they ripped open a bag labeled _Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans_.

"Mmm, peppermint!"

"Yuck! I think this one's grass-flavored," Harry said. "Why in the world would they even make that?"

"Maybe they use a spell and they can't control the flavors they get," Hermione suggested, and she bit into another jelly bean. "Oooh, I love a good curry…"

When they'd just about finished the sweets, Hermione looked around ruefully. "Oh, Mum would kill me if she saw how much sugar I ate…"

"You have your trunk with you," Harry pointed out. "You could just grab your toothbrush and nick down to the loo for a minute."

"I suppose…" Hermione pulled out her trunk and started looking through it, then glanced over her shoulder at Harry. "Coming?"

"What?"

"You should brush your teeth, too."

"_My_ guardians aren't dentists. Uncle Vernon sells drills—he probably approves of tooth decay."

"Harry!"

He finally gave in, and they went off to brush their teeth. When they came back, they found a boy poking through their sweets wrappers.

"Excuse me," Harry said loudly.

The boy jumped and whirled around. He had a round face and a troubled expression. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to snoop! I lost my toad, and I can't find him! Have you seen him at all?"

Harry shook his head, but Hermione started asking questions. "How big is he? Does he wander off often? Where have you looked?" The boy stumbled through the answers, and in a few minutes of whirlwind discussion, Hermione had somehow turned this Neville boy's search into a Quest for the Lost Toad, and conscripted Harry into it.

When she reached for the door to the compartment across from theirs, Harry had to remind her that Neville'd said he'd already checked the rest of their car.

Hermione's cheeks turned pink. Neville slipped around her and opened the door to the next car for her—hapless or not, someone must have drilled manners into the boy—and the three of them headed to the first compartment.

Hermione opened the compartment door and demanded, "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one."

Harry winced. Perhaps Neville would be a better spokesperson.

There were three boys in the car. One of them had sandy-blond hair, and when he answered with a "No," it was with an Irish accent. Another was a black boy in a jersey from West Ham FC; he shook his head mutely. The last of them was a red-haired boy with lots of freckles; he was looking at Harry as though he'd never seen black hair before, and instead of answering Hermione, he said, "Are you—Harry Potter?"

"That's what they told me to write on my homework," Harry grumbled.

"Really?" Seamus sat up straighter, now peering at Harry.

"Really," Harry said.

The black boy, Neville, and Hermione all had surprised looks, but they were different sorts of surprise. The black boy looked at his two companions as though they'd suddenly revealed they belonged to a strange cult. Neville looked at Harry as though he hadn't really seen him before; apparently he didn't realize which "Harry" he was being hastily introduced to. Hermione looked like she'd handed in an essay and only then remembered she'd meant to add a paragraph in the middle.

"Do you—d'you have the scar?" the red-haired boy asked.

"No, I left it back in my trunk."

The Irish boy guffawed; the black boy looked even more confused; the redhead's ears started turning pink.

"Look," Harry said, and he lifted his fringe. "There you go. World's worst Halloween trick. Now have you seen Neville's toad?"

The red-haired boy was staring at Harry's forehead. "No," he finally said.

"Well, if any of you see him, let Neville here know, yeah? We'd better try the next compartment."

"R-right," Hermione said.

But the next few tries weren't much better. Finally, after escaping from a compartment where he told four girls that his scar had been bought by the National Trust and was closed for restoration, Harry turned to Hermione and Neville.

"Look, I'd like to help, but this will go a lot faster without the Boy Who Lived sideshow. Why don't you two keep going, and I'll wait for you in our compartment?"

Hermione frowned, but finally assented. Neville politely thanked him for his help.

"I'm not sure how helpful I really was, but you're welcome."

Once back in their compartment, he lifted his and Hermione's trunks back into the luggage racks and carried all the empty candy wrappers to a rubbish bin in the corridor. Then he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on one of the benches, back propped against the wall. He reached into his mokeskin pouch, withdrew the packets of photos, and started looking through them.

People had sent him a lot of photographs for a lot of different reasons. Each photo had a bit of parchment stuck to the back identifying the sender, receipt date, and subjects of the photos (along with some scribbles that Harry assumed were Gobbledygook), but without the original letters, sometimes Harry had to guess why the photo was sent. A small boy in robes with a face-paint scar on his forehead, pushing glasses up his nose, was obvious enough. So were three wizards standing in a row, baring their left forearms to show lightning-bolt tattoos. A photograph of a squirming newborn baby mystified him until he turned it over and saw that the child's name was Harry Crockford_._ Even after checking the labels, though, he had no idea why four witches, three relatives of witches, and one wizard had sent him naked pictures.

Between the children he'd met looking for Trevor and the stack of photos in his hands, Harry wondered if he had the patience to be popular.

As he looked at each photo, he tossed the previous one on the floor next to his seat. He was starting to become frustrated when he came across a photo that stopped him cold.

A man in fancy black robes lifted a witch in gauzy white. He twirled her around—they both laughed silently as her crimson hair trailed behind her—and set her on her feet with a kiss. They smiled to each other, and then both turned their heads to smile to the camera, cheeks and brows touching.

The man looked just like Charles and Dorea. Just like Harry.

And the woman _had Harry's eyes_.

Hands trembling, Harry turned the picture over to look at the label.

_James and Lily Potter. Sent by R.J. Lupin, 31 July 1985._

Someone had sent this to him for his fifth birthday. Somewhere out there, some kind wizard or witch had been thinking of _him_ when he was still huddled in his cupboard.

_Why?_

He turned the photo back over, staring hungrily at _his mum and dad_, and tenaciously held back his tears.

"Who's the bird?" someone said behind him.

Harry spun and reached into his pockets, and before they could even blink, each of a pair of redheaded twins had one of Harry's daggers pointed at his chest.

The two looked at the blades, then at each other.

"Wicked!" they said together.

"Sorry," Harry said, pocketing the knives. "You startled me."

"No worries, I do the same thing when Mum wakes me up before eight," the twin on the left said reasonably. "I'm Fred Weasley, by the way, and this is my brother George."

"I thought I was Fred!" the other protested.

"No, I'm Fred," the first said. "Fred is the handsome one, remember?"

"Maybe you're both Fred," Harry suggested.

The two boys looked at each other. "Then who's George?" they said together.

"I guess I'm George," Harry said.

"But Fred is the handsome one," the twin on the left said. "Nobody gives George pictures like this." And he turned around a photo in his hand—one of the naked witch photos.

Harry turned red, but after a moment, he said, "Then I guess I'm Fred."

The two boys laughed and clapped Harry on the shoulders. "You're all right for an ickle firstie," the twin on the right said. "Good luck with the Sorting!"

"And if you decide you don't want to look at these," the one on the left said, giving the photo back to Harry, "I'm sure we can find someone in the upper years who would."

The twins left. Harry gathered up the photos and pulled down his trunk; on reflection, he put the nudes in his secret compartment and the others in the main one.

The photo of his parents, he put back in his mokeskin pouch.

—

**A/N**: Rowling messed up certain aspects of King's Cross in canon, but after trying to sort things out for myself here, I can hardly blame her. King's Cross St. Pancras is possibly the most complex set of Underground stations and train junctions in London, and it's undergone so much remodeling in the last couple decades that I just can't figure out what it all looked like in 1991. It's quite possible that the long tunnels I remember in the Tube station were connected to different lines than the ones I described here. If you're a Londoner and found yourself shouting at the screen about how that's not how the station is at all, I apologize—just imagine I'd given details that would make all this make sense.

Also, I hope nobody feels like I'm bashing Ron here. In canon, the Weasleys run into Harry on the platform, and when Fred expresses curiosity about Harry's encounter with Voldemort, Mrs. Weasley explicitly tells her children not to pester him. When Ron and Harry meet a few minutes later, Ron is obviously extremely curious about Harry's scar, but he has his mother's warning in mind and is trying to be as tactful as he can be about it. Here, Ron didn't get such a warning, and even if he had it would've been hours before, so he lets his inner doofus show a bit more. (Ron is not an idiot or an asshole, but he is a bit of a doofus.)


	5. Chapter 5: The Sorting

If I owned Harry Potter, you wouldn't have had to wait for this chapter.

**Chapter Five  
****The Sorting****  
**

"Welcome to Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall said. She was sterner in person than she'd come across as in writing, but no less poised. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family…"

The Sorting. It seemed like everybody he'd met had mentioned it. Dumbledore had been the first, wishing him luck with his Sorting. So had the Weasley twins. He and Hermione had discussed it at Flourish and Blotts, and the people in his little boat had done the same: Hermione favored Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, Neville wanted Gryffindor but thought he'd probably end up in Hufflepuff, and Seamus Finnigan, the Irish boy they'd met while looking for Trevor, just hoped the more painful rumors about the Sorting weren't true.

Nobody seemed to have any idea what the Sorting involved. _Hogwarts: A History_ had spoken vaguely of a test of character, and other than that, said that the Sorting process was traditionally kept secret from outsiders. Seamus had heard a half-dozen different claims from his mother, each one more outlandish than the last. Neville had simply been told that he should make sure to wash behind his ears—"but Gran always says that, so it might not mean anything at all," he said.

Hermione was growing increasingly nervous, and even after Harry reminded her that they couldn't possibly expect her to know any magic yet, she kept reciting spells under her breath, as if she was going to forget them in the next ten minutes. Neville was fiddling with his cloak so much that the clasp had worked its way around to his shoulder. Seamus was tapping his foot, and the redheaded boy from his compartment seemed to be turning green; his brothers had apparently claimed he would have to wrestle a troll. Even Draco Malfoy was glancing around nervously, as though expecting that troll to burst through a stone wall at any moment.

Outwardly, Harry was calm, but that was only because he was repeating Ellie's instruction as though it were a mantra: _Always look like you know what you're doing._ In truth, Harry hadn't been this nervous in years. It had been a very long time since something he actually cared about wasn't under his control. This Sorting, Professor McGonagall had claimed, would have a tremendous influence on the next seven years of his life.

And Harry had no idea how it would go.

From what he'd read, Gryffindor sought brave and chivalrous people; "chivalrous" here seemed to be a combination of both honorable and helpful to those in need. Slytherin sought cunning and ambitious students. Ravenclaw sought swots, and Hufflepuff sought the students you'd want to partner with in group projects.

Maybe he'd end up in Slytherin—after all, tricking Vernon into giving him a day in Diagon Alley had been pretty cunning, hadn't it? Most of the former Death Eaters mentioned in _The Ministry of Magnates_ had been Sorted to Slytherin, though, and Harry assumed Draco Malfoy and his muscle would end up there too. That would be an interesting school experience, assuming he wasn't murdered in his sleep.

Maybe he'd end up in Gryffindor—hadn't he just casually walked down Knockturn Alley the previous day? But despite her wishes, Harry was certain that Hermione would go to Ravenclaw; she was too smart to end up anywhere else. That would leave Harry alone in the house. He worried he'd end up in a dorm room full of Boy-Who-Lived fans like that redhead. Harry winced as he imagined staring at the mirror, brushing his teeth, trying to ignore other boys gawking at his scar. Maybe it'd be better to be with the Death Eater children. At least he'd be allowed to stab them if they tried anything.

Maybe he'd end up in Ravenclaw with Hermione. He imagined that would be a peaceful, quiet group; his only worry would be that they would be excessively curious about his scar, which could lead to a lot of pestering, or to him waking up strapped to a table surrounded by instruments with strange spinning bits while a needle descended towards his forehead.

A few people behind Harry screamed, and he whirled around, hand reaching into his pocket (though he fought the urge to actually draw). A group of pearly white translucent people had somehow floated into the room—and even as he watched, more passed through the wall. They conversed with each other about someone called Peeves until a ghost in a ruff suddenly noticed the children.

"I say, what are you all doing here?" he said.

"New students!" said the smiling ghost of a corpulent monk. "About to be Sorted, I suppose?"

A few of Harry's new classmates nodded.

"Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!" the ghost said. "My old House, you know."

Maybe Harry would end up in Hufflepuff—but no, that was just silly.

Professor McGonagall arrived again and shooed out the ghosts, then formed everyone into a line and led them into the Great Hall.

It was all the strangeness and majesty of Hogwarts Castle's exterior expressed in one room. Four long tables, set in gold and silver, stretched the length of the hall, with black-robed students sitting at them on benches. A fifth table stood at the head of the Hall; the teachers and Hagrid sat at it in comfortable-looking chairs. Above all this, thousands of burning candles illuminated the hall. Above those, banners spaced along the length of the hall hung over the four tables: emerald over the nearest table, then bright yellow, midnight blue, and scarlet. Each banner held the name or crest of one of the Houses.

And above the banners were the heavens. Harry could perceive the vague shapes of beams and joints and roof slats, but all of it seemed to be translucent like glass, and the Milky Way shone more brightly and clearly through it all than Harry had ever seen before.

Hermione whispered, "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in _Hogwarts: A History._"

"I know," Harry whispered back to her. "I didn't expect it to be so beautiful."

Harry's attention was drawn back to Earth when the chatter in the Great Hall died down. Professor McGonagall had led the first years to the head of the room, in front of the teachers' table, and set a wooden stool in front of the students. On top of that stool was a pointed wizard's hat so patched and frayed Harry thought it might be older than the castle. For a few seconds, there was complete silence.

Then the hat _sang_. It _sang_ and it called itself the _Sorting Hat_ and it talked about the Houses and it instructed them to _put it on to be Sorted_ and it ended its song with a _horrible pun_.

And everyone applauded.

"Maybe Dumbledore is normal for a wizard," Hermione murmured to Harry, her eyes wide.

Soon, Professor McGonagall started reading names from a long roll of parchment. "Brown, Lavender" was the first person Harry recognized—she'd been in one of the compartments they'd visited during the Quest for the Lost Toad. It wasn't too long afterwards that "Granger, Hermione!" was called.

She glanced at Harry uncertainly and he said, "Good luck!" She smiled, ran to the stool, and almost jammed it on her head.

And then they waited. And waited. And waited. Hermione took much more time than any student before her had; Harry could not see her face, but she was leaning forward in much the way she had when they'd speculated about the process used to flavor Bertie Bott's earlier.

Finally, much to Harry's surprise, the Hat shouted "GRYFFINDOR!" Hermione found a seat at the table with the red banners and waved to Harry, a very pleased smile on her face.

"Longbottom, Neville!" was the next name Harry recognized. Neville tripped on his way to the stool, then sat upon it for nearly as long as Hermione, but unlike Hermione, he seemed to be almost in a panic as the Hat made its decision. The Hat called "GRYFFINDOR!" for him too, but he ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back to give it to the next girl as the Hall laughed. Hermione waved him over to her excitedly, and he sat on one side of her.

Hermione seemed to be keeping the other side open. Harry's worry about the Sorting only increased. It really wasn't going as he'd expected.

Harry was slightly reassured to see Malfoy become a "SLYTHERIN!" Still, before he knew it, Professor McGonagall called, "Potter, Harry!"

Whispers instantly broke out throughout the hall.

"_Potter_, did she say?"

"_The_ Harry Potter?"

"Does that mean Portia is here, too?"

Reminding himself to look like he knew what he was doing, Harry took the Hat and sat upon the stool. As the Hat dropped down over his head, he got one last glimpse of a thousand people all trying to get one last glimpse of him.

"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. You have some of the traits I'm looking for in each House, but none of them are quite right…"

_Not Slytherin?_ Harry thought.

"Oh, you have all the cunning a Slytherin could ever hope for," the Hat replied. "I can see it all here in your head—you could be great. You are powerful and intelligent and resourceful—but what do you want to _do_ with all that?"

Harry thought for a moment, and realized he didn't have an answer.

"That's the problem, you see, ambition. Salazar would think this a tragic waste of potential."

(And the Sorting Hat was pleased as it saw that the seed had been planted, for its duty was to guide each child to their full potential, and this boy could accomplish almost anything he set his mind to, if only it occurred to him to set his mind to anything at all.)

"No, definitely not Slytherin House for you," the Hat continued."You are smart enough for Ravenclaw, but the true Ravenclaw sees knowledge as an end in itself, while you see it as a means. They're not the right choice, either."

_What about Gryffindor?_ Harry asked.

"Gryffindor...well, chivalrous, yes, I can see that. You've been a white knight to many people in need. The real problem is bravery."

_I'm no coward!_ Harry thought.

"No, you're something else entirely. Ever since you accidentally put a knife through your uncle's hand, you've been utterly fearless."

_Is that supposed to be a bad thing?_

"No, but it's not a Gryffindor thing. Bravery is not lack of fear; it's setting your fear aside to do what needs to be done. Your response to fear is untested. I have no way to tell if you're suitable to Gryffindor."

_Which leaves…_ Harry thought with dawning horror.

"Yes, Hufflepuff_,"_ said the Hat.

_Oh, come on! I wouldn't fit in there at all!_

"Why not?" the Hat asked. "You are certainly hardworking—I've never seen a child work as hard as you with as little grumbling—and you are loyal to those who are loyal to you. In Hufflepuff you would be surrounded by trustworthy children, and your ability to be loyal would grow."

_But...but...I'm just not that kind of person!_ Harry thought.

"I Sort each child to the House where they will grow to their greatest potential, not necessarily the House they most resemble at age eleven. Merlin knows half of the Gryffindor firsties need to finish growing their spines, and few of the Slytherins come into their own as plotters before Fifth Year."

_Then couldn't you send me to Gryffindor to "grow a spine" too?_

"Not everyone can," the Hat replied, "and I can't be sure about you."

Something within Harry chilled. _Or Slytherin, to find an ambition?_ he asked desperately.

"You just don't seem to be the type," the Hat said. (And by telling Harry that he couldn't, the Hat all but ensured that he would. Yes, this Sorting was going exceptionally well.)

And so Harry would go to Hufflepuff…

He could imagine it now—the Hat shouting out the name, the Hufflepuff table applauding madly, Hermione looking like someone had burned a book in front of her, and throughout the rest of the hall, snickers and whispers of "so much for the Boy Who Lived…" Those snickers would follow him, and even the tactic he'd used in Little Whinging—intimidating people into leaving him be—would be hard to pull off…

_You've faced worse,_ he reminded himself. _You'll face this too._ And he hardened his resolve.

"Well, I guess that settles it," the Hat said. "Better be—GRYFFINDOR!" it shouted to the hall.

_What?!_ Harry thought, as the applause began to wash over him.

"You felt fear and were prepared to face it," The Hat explained. "That's Gryffindor enough for me."

_A day will come when you find me holding something sharp, pointy, and inside you_, Harry thought back fiercely, and as the Hat chuckled in his ear, he pulled it from his head.

Gryffindor was beside itself with joy. The entire table was applauding—not polite applause like they'd given for the other firsties, but ferociously, as though they'd just won a great prize. The twin upperclassmen, Fred and George, were chanting "We got Potter! We got Potter!" Oddly enough, the Hufflepuffs were applauding too, though he didn't understand why. He sent a silent apology to the House in yellow—he didn't mean to malign them, he just didn't want to be one of them.

Well, maybe that didn't actually help. Oh well. He'd never particularly tried to be a _good_ person.

"Welcome to Gryffindor, Fred!" the Weasley twins said together as Harry reached the table.

"Thanks, George and George!" Harry laughed. He slapped both Twins on the back, gave a few other boys high fives, shook the hand of the redheaded prefect who'd chased off Malfoy, and plopped down next to Hermione, who gave him a sort of sideways hug.

He could get used to this hugging thing.

"Congratulations, Harry!" she said, beaming.

He squeezed her shoulder and turned to watch "Thomas, Dean", the black West Ham fan, join Gryffindor.

There were only a few children left to sort. "Turpin, Lisa" joined Ravenclaw. The staring redhead from the train—"Weasley, Ronald", so perhaps he was the Weasley twins' brother or cousin—looked extremely relieved when he collapsed onto the bench across from Harry. "Well done, Ron, excellent," said the prefect, and now that they were next to each other, Harry could see that they must be related too. How many Weasleys were there at this school?

"Zabini, Blaise" became a Slytherin, and Professor McGonagall took the Sorting Hat away. Then Albus Dumbledore stood, beaming as though a thousand of his closest friends had come to dinner, and the hall quietened.

"Welcome!" he said. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts. Before our feast begins, I'd like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

"Thank you!" he said, and sat again. Everyone clapped and cheered.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other. "Mad," they said together.

They soon dug into the food that magically appeared on the platters. The Gryffindor House ghost, an aristocratic chap who'd died around the time the New World was discovered, introduced himself, and Ronald Weasley continued to show his superior tact by bringing up a memorable but apparently hated nickname. Harry resolved to use "Sir Nick" himself.

When the desserts appeared, talk turned to the new Gryffindors' families. Seamus had a Muggle father; Neville had been raised by his grandmother and a horde of great-uncles and -aunts; Ron talked about his five wizard brothers, who apparently included Fred and George and Percy the prefect, and his little sister. Hermione was caught up in a discussion of academics with Percy, so Harry answered for her. "Hermione here's got Muggle parents, and I might as well have. My Muggle aunt and uncle knew, but they never told me."

Parvati Patil broke in. "Really? So that story about you and Dumbledore in the Black Forest—"

"Made up," Harry said. "I've never even seen a unicorn, let alone bonded one as a familiar."

Parvati and Lavender Brown looked crestfallen. "I was looking forward to meeting Portia," Lavender said.

"I read there are unicorns in the Forbidden Forest," Hermione offered.

"Maybe Hagrid knows a few," Harry said. "He's the gamekeeper, and a pretty friendly bloke."

Lavender looked at Hagrid speculatively.

Hagrid must have noticed Harry and Lavender looking at him, for he gave them a cheery wave. Harry waved back, his eyes roaming over the other teachers. Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore were deep in a discussion of some kind; further down the table, Professor Quirrell, who'd added an absurd purple turban to his ensemble, was looking at the next teacher down, a wizard with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.

The other teacher looked past Quirrell's head straight into Harry's eyes, and suddenly, Harry's scar felt like he'd run one of his knives along its length. He winced, reaching up to touch it.

"Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Nothing," Harry said, but Hermione looked unconvinced. "Just a little headache. I think it was the Sorting."

"You _were_ under the Hat a long time…"

"So were you," Harry said.

"It was thinking about Gryffindor, but was leaning toward Ravenclaw," she said.

"What changed its mind?" Harry asked.

"I told it that either way, I wouldn't do anyone's homework for them anymore." Then she reddened and clapped her hand over her mouth.

Harry went very still.

"H-Harry?" she asked.

Harry grasped her elbow and turned her to look at him. "If anyone ever makes a problem of themselves," he growled, "you come to me and they won't be a problem anymore. All right?"

"A-all right," she said, and she didn't leave his side that night until it was time to go to their beds.

—

**A/N**: I think Hufflepuff is highly underrated by many people, including this story's Harry.

Portia is borrowed from _Labyrinth_ by Kroontjespen (story number 8375078 on this site). It's an entertaining Slytherin!Hermione/Harry story which sadly hasn't been updated in about six months.


	6. Chapter 6: The Potions Master

If I owned Harry Potter, this story wouldn't be set in Verdana (and the Pottermore e-books wouldn't be in Times New Roman, either).

**Chapter Six**

**The Potions Master**

Hogwarts Castle was a very strange place indeed. When Percy the prefect had led the first-year Gryffindors to bed, Harry had fought back his sleepiness and paid close attention to the route. He'd honed this skill in the labyrinthine back halls of shopping malls, grocers, office buildings, a hospital or two, even a police station once. It had been two years since he'd gotten lost anywhere.

Harry got lost three times on the way down to breakfast.

Hogwarts, Harry soon realized, didn't really have a layout, not in the way Muggles would understand it. Everything moved around on its own, seemingly according to the castle's whims. After the second time he got lost, Harry had thought about drawing a map, but by the end of the next day, he'd realized he couldn't—any map would have to be as magical as the castle itself.

Still, if you let go of the idea that the castle should have a strict floor plan, you could learn how to get around. You just had to keep the day of the week, lunar phase, and current House point leader in mind.

Harry enjoyed most of his classes, particularly Charms and Transfiguration, though he was surprised to find that both were harder than he'd expected. Harry had to _want the spell to work_, of course, but his holly-and-phoenix-feather wand was pickier than that: it also demanded careful attention to wand movements and pronunciation. He could fudge these things a little bit by _wanting_ it harder, but that only got him so far.

Fortunately, Hermione stuck to his side like glue, and she had an eye for detail. After she got the spell working for herself (and she was always the first to get it working), she would turn to Harry and point out the little wobble he was introducing in the flick, or the way he was slurring the third syllable, or how his concentration seemed to waver when the matchstick started to shift. He wasn't always the second to get the spell, but he always _got_ it, and that's what counted.

Defense should have been another class like those two, Harry sensed, but the teacher made all the difference—Quirrell belonged in a therapist's office, not a classroom. The ghost teaching History of Magic was even worse—his class was used as a study hall at best and a dormitory at worst. Astronomy was held at midnight on the tallest tower; Hermione had been so busy remembering her telescope and textbooks that she forgot her cloak, and Harry had to lend her his. Herbology was basically high-stakes gardening; Hermione wasn't especially good at it, but Harry was, and during their fist class he'd discovered that Neville Longbottom was even better.

And then there was Potions.

Harry hadn't forgotten the pain that had shot through his scar when the hook-nosed teacher looked into his eyes; he just didn't want to call attention to the man immediately after Hermione had noticed Harry's scar hurting. The next morning, though, he sat near the Weasley twins and pointed out the man as he filled his plate at the teachers' table.

"That's Professor Snape," George (Harry was guessing) told Harry, and he instantly knew he'd be trouble.

The pseudonymous Wizard of Oz had dedicated an entire chapter of his book to Albus Dumbledore; the author seemed to think he was well-intended but growing senile, and his hiring of Severus Snape was, if not Exhibit A, at least Exhibit C. The man hadn't even had the decency to pretend he'd been bewitched when he'd carried out atrocities for Voldemort; Dumbledore had simply explained that his terrible crimes were committed to maintain his cover, and he had enough political power to ensure the Wizengamot would accept that excuse. Complaints against Professor Snape had been piling up ever since, but Dumbledore ignored them, simply insisting, "I trust Severus Snape."

As the author had pointed out, that didn't mean anyone _else_ had a reason to trust him.

The book had been published a few years before, and Harry had hoped Snape's reputation had caught up with him in the meantime, but apparently not—here he was, comfortably roosting at the teachers' table, spearing black pudding on his fork.

"He's a foul git," probably-Fred said.

"If you aren't in his house—"

"—Slytherin, that is—" Fred interjected.

"—it's just a question of whether he dislikes you or loathes you."

"We're in the second category, of course," Fred said brightly.

"Don't worry if he takes points off you," George said. "It usually means you're doing something right."

"Unless you were trying not to get caught, of course," Fred said.

"Too true, brother," George said.

When his first class with Snape rolled around, it went about as well as Harry had feared. Snape targeted him from the get-go, singling him out during roll call and then giving him a verbal pop quiz immediately.

"Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

_What?_ Next to him, Hermione's hand had shot up, but Snape ignored her.

"I don't know, sir," Harry said.

"Tut, tut—fame clearly isn't everything. Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find a bezoar?"

This one Harry remembered from the textbook's introductory chapter on brewing safety. "They come from the stomach of a goat, sir, and neutralize most poisons."

"And when Granger here starts foaming at the mouth because you exposed her to something toxic, are you going to look for a goat?" Snape sneered. "Each of you should have a bezoar in the top left compartment of your brewing kit. _Every_ time you sit down to brew, you should check that it's there, _before_ you begin."

Harry fumed internally. He felt sure that had been a trick question, and if he'd answered with his potions kit, Snape would have called it cheek.

"Perhaps, Potter, you can give us a more useful explanation of the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

Harry racked his brain trying to remember. Did Snape expect him to have memorized _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_? Finally, he said, "I don't know, sir."

"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, Potter? For your information, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death, and monkshood and wolfsbane are the same plant. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?

As everyone searched through their bags for quill and parchment, Snape said, "Two non-answers and one useless one. A point will be taken from Gryffindor for your ill-preparedness, Potter."

They soon began brewing, but that didn't seem to soften Snape's mood. He swept through the dungeon, praising the Slytherins and brutally critiquing the Gryffindors. Snape was just crowing about Malfoy's preparation process when Neville yelled in pain—Seamus's cauldron had somehow melted into a misshapen blob, and a caustic red liquid had gushed out of it, drenching Neville and spreading across the floor. Everyone jumped up onto their stools, trying to avoid becoming the next victim of the potion.

Snape stalked toward the boil-covered Neville, his face twisting into a snarl. Neville saw him and seemed to fold in on himself. Harry saw what Snape was about to do—

_You can get help from people who need help._

—and he "tripped" over his own feet, landing on his side in the acidic potion.

Harry couldn't help it—he cried out in pain. The potion felt like fire on his skin, and when he lifted himself off the floor by his elbow, the sensation of needles being driven into his flesh was added to the mix.

Snape whirled around. "Clumsy fool!" he snapped at Harry. "Do you lean against the walls when you walk to class, too?"

The Slytherins laughed, and Harry gritted his teeth against the pain.

"Granger, take Potter up to the Hospital Wing. Finnigan, you take Longbottom too."

Hermione held her tongue until the four of them were climbing the stairs to the next floor. "I know that was deliberate, Harry. Why did you do it?"

Seamus and Neville stopped at the question. The truth, Harry realized, would be embarrassing to Neville, but he could shade it slightly…

"Snape already hates me," Harry said. "I reckoned he might as well yell at me instead of Neville."

Neville looked surprised. "Thanks, Harry."

"Anytime, Neville."

They continued on together, but only one of them knew that Snape had made an enemy that day.

—

The school nurse clucked her tongue when she saw Harry and Neville's burns.

"What happened?"

"First Potions class," Hermione said. "Neville's cauldron sort of melted and spilled a caustic mixture on the floor…"

"The Cure for Boils?" she said, directing Harry and Neville to side-by-side hospital beds.

"Yes," Hermione said.

"You probably added the porcupine quills while the cauldron was still on the fire," the nurse told Neville. "That releases the magic in the quills too quickly; it melts through the cauldron, and since you haven't added the horned slugs to neutralize the acidity, the brew hurts much more than it helps. It's an easy mistake to make. Fortunately, it's easy to fix, too—just take a properly brewed dose and you'll be fine."

She walked to a store cupboard and pulled out two bottles.

"Why Professor Snape starts with that potion I'll never understand—there are potions just as easy to brew that don't do half the damage. Here," she said, handing a bottle each to Harry and Neville, "drink it down. Bottoms up."

Harry drank his dose, and immediately wished he hadn't. The potion tasted like incredibly thick snot, yet he felt like it was stinging his throat on the way down. He gagged and reached for a glass of water the nurse offered him. After a moment, though, the pain in his side faded, and he watched as the boils on his arm first seemed to deflate, then tighten to the normal shape of his arm, and finally fade from an angry red to match the rest of his skin.

"That should do it for both of you," she said once a particularly stubborn bump on Neville's cheek had finally disappeared.

"Thank you, Madam—" Neville started.

"Pomfrey," she said.

"Thanks, Madam Pomfrey," Harry added.

Hermione checked her watch. "I suppose we should go back to class…"

"Oh, no you don't," Madam Pomfrey said. "I'm holding these two for observation for a little while longer, and I haven't given any of you four a physical yet…"

—

Hermione's planning obsession, Harry had discovered during the last week, was worse than he'd feared. That would have to change.

Harry had needed to cajole her mightily, but Hermione had finally agreed to put off their Transfiguration essay until Saturday morning. He'd used the twin weapons of obligation (he'd promised to take tea with Hagrid, and invited Hermione along) and reward (he had a trunk full of books he hadn't even glanced at from his postal vault, and promised to let her borrow anything that caught her fancy if she helped him sort them out). Her resolve crumbled at the thought of getting her hands on books full of interesting and advanced magic. And so the two of them climbed the stairs to the boys' dormitories, Hermione for the first time.

"It's a little messy," she said as she looked around Harry's dormitory.

"Ron Weasley doesn't really watch where he puts things," Harry replied, fishing through his pockets for his keyring, "and Seamus doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept of a 'hamper'."

Hermione giggled, then picked up the photo propped against Harry's bedside lamp. "Are these—"

"My parents," Harry said as he turned the key. "Be careful—it's the only one I have." The trunk popped open, and Hermione set the picture down carefully before joining him.

The titles ranged from the mundane (_Charm Your Own Cheese_) to the interesting (_Travels with Trolls_) to the pompous (_Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy_) to the intriguing (_Secrets and Lies_). They were nearly done when Harry checked the time and realized it was getting towards three o'clock.

Harry locked up the trunk and the two of them headed down to Hagrid's house. The visit was pleasant, but only three things stood out. The first was the expression on Hermione's face when Harry introduced her as his friend. The second was the way Hagrid evaded Harry's questions about why Snape hated him. The third was a newspaper cutting Harry found, detailing a break-in to an empty Gringotts vault on the very day Hagrid had emptied Vault 713.

Harry didn't tell Hermione about this until they were on their way back to the castle.

"I don't know," she said, biting her lip. "It does seem like an unlikely coincidence, but it _could_ just be a coincidence. Besides, where would they have moved it? Gringotts is supposed to be the safest place in Britain, isn't it?"

"Hagrid said…" Harry's brow furrowed as he tried to remember. "He said that the only place safer than Gringotts was Hogwarts. And he said that he was emptying it on Hogwarts business. What if it's...what if it's inside the castle?"

Hermione scoffed. "Honestly, Harry. If the item in that vault was so valuable that dark wizards powerful enough to break into Gringotts were after it, why would the teachers hide it in a school? They'd be putting the students in terrible danger!"

Harry sighed. "You're right—it doesn't sound like a very good plan."

But he couldn't help but think that, if Dumbledore was as mad as some people said, maybe it didn't have to be a good plan.

—

Hermione was so nervous after dinner that she dropped _Notable Magical Names of Our Time_ three times while they sat together in the common room. Harry finally took pity on her and suggested they start on their Transfiguration essay a little early.

Still, he thought, it was a start.

Harry finished his essay that night, but Hermione wanted to look up a few references to expand hers, so they split up the next morning. Hermione headed to the library, while Harry headed towards Gryffindor Tower to test a theory.

Though Hogwarts's layout changed constantly, there were a few common patterns. One was that each classroom was off a short corridor with two other doors. He'd seen students waiting outside one of the doors, which he guessed led to the teacher's office; the other he assumed was a storeroom.

Once, though, when he and Hermione got lost on their way back from Charms class, Harry had noticed one of these corridors that looked disused—though the floor was still being swept, the silver doorknobs had tarnished, and there were a few cobwebs in the corners. He'd never seen a student in that corridor, either, and he'd made a point to pass it a couple other times since.

Now he stepped into the disused corridor, grasped the tarnished handle he assumed led to the classroom, and stepped through the door.

The desks and chairs in this classroom had been pushed to the side walls and piled up; a life-sized model of a human skeleton stood in a corner, and yellowed, curling posters attached to the walls showed the layouts of organs and arteries and veins. The chalk board at the front of the room was blank. Everything was covered in a thin, undisturbed layer of dust. Perhaps once Healers and nurses like Madam Pomfrey had been trained in this room, but the class had been moved or discontinued.

Just in case, he knocked on the door to the office before entering, but there was nobody there—only a desk, a few chairs, an empty filing cabinet, and a bookcase with a few volumes that were incomprehensible to a boy with only a week of magical education (and, in one case, because he couldn't read Latin). He'd been correct that the other room was a storeroom; it mainly seemed to contain anatomical dummies of various sorts covered in sheets, but more usefully, it included a mop and bucket. Harry left the mop in the classroom, then carried the bucket to a nearby loo and filled it with soap and water. Then he carried the bucket back to the classroom and got to work.

An hour later, the classroom was, if not up to Aunt Petunia's standards, at least not likely to make him sneeze every time he set foot inside it. Harry then reached into his rucksack. He pulled out his dartboard and a package of Velcro strips he'd brought to Hogwarts for just this purpose, and stuck the dartboard to the wall.

Finally, he walked to the middle of the room and started practicing. He'd never thrown the collapsible knife from the Diagon Alley curio store, after all—best learn its balance before he needed to use it.

—

"Finish your essay?" Harry asked as he grabbed a corned beef sandwich and some chips at lunch.

"Yes," Hermione said. "I'm glad I took the time to chase down those references—Switch's explanation of the clockwise rotation turned out to gloss over some important details. What did you do?"

Harry shrugged. "Explored the castle, mostly."

"Did you find anything good?"

"I think so," Harry said. "We'll have to see."


	7. Chapter 7: The Kill

If I owned Harry Potter, Harry would have panicked and done something useless in this chapter.

**TRIGGER WARNING**: Knives and blood. Lots of blood.

**Chapter Seven  
****The Kill****  
**

The Gryffindors' first attempt at learning to fly had not gone well. They'd been grouped with the Slytherins and given rickety old brooms to ride on. The teachers would soon regret both of those decisions.

Poor, hapless Neville had accidentally caused the whole incident. He took off too early and lost control of his rather dubious-looking broom. A moment later, he had returned to the ground without it—and with a nasty crack.

"Broken wrist," the flying instructor, Madam Hooch, had said. She helped Neville to his feet, ordered them all to stay on the ground _or else_, and took Neville to the Hospital Wing.

The trouble really started, though, when Malfoy found the Remembrall that Neville had received at breakfast that morning. Harry had demanded he give it back. A hush had fallen over the crowd of students, and Malfoy had smiled nastily.

"I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find—how about—up a tree?" Then he hopped onto his broomstick and flew towards a tall oak.

Hermione grabbed at Harry's arm, trying to stop him from following, but he had no intention of doing that. Instead, he concentrated on the ground under Malfoy's flight path and _wanted_.

A pebble, barely a speck at this distance, shot up, flying straight toward Malfoy, hitting the broomstick just as Malfoy was pulling up to ascend to the topmost branches. The broomstick snapped in half with a loud _crack_. Malfoy tumbled off the back of the broom, still clutching the handle as he screamed, and fell into the tree, coming to a stop about two-thirds of the way up.

"DRACO MALFOY!"

Professor McGonagall had arrived.

—

It was a close thing. If his father hadn't heard about it, Malfoy might have been expelled. Instead, the blond man strode into the Great Hall that afternoon, cloaked in fine silk and elegant malice, and met Dumbledore. The two of them headed to the Hospital Wing, and then to the Headmaster's office.

When all was said and done, Malfoy lost twenty-five points for Slytherin, received two weeks' detention, and was banned from flying for the year. Much to his embarrassment, he was told he could take lessons with next year's firsties. Malfoy's insistence that Harry must have done it somehow was ignored in light of a stolen object in his pocket and the fact that Harry's wand had never left its holster. Instead, Malfoy's father had decided that Dumbledore's pleas for new brooms weren't just an attempt to pad his budget after all.

And so it was that Harry's second flying lesson was held without Draco Malfoy, but with twenty brand-new Cleansweep Threes and the captains of the two houses' Quidditch teams on hand to supervise if Madam Hooch had to leave.

The new brooms made a world of difference. Even Neville, who had earned Harry's respect when he stood trembling over another broomstick only a week after his previous fall, got the broom to leap into his hand immediately.

"Now, let's try this again. When I blow my whistle, kick off from the ground, hard. Hold steady, rise a few feet, and lean forward to come straight back down. Three—two—one!" She blew her whistle.

Harry's feet left the ground, and he laughed joyously as his robes billowed behind him. This was _wonderful!_

Half an hour into the class, Harry was fifty feet in the air and turning hard when he saw a metallic glint below him. His keys had slipped out of his pocket and were falling to the ground. Without the slightest thought, he converted the turn into a corkscrew descent, catching the keys and dropping them into an inside pocket as he pulled back up into the pattern Madam Hooch had ordered them into.

He didn't notice Oliver Wood gaping from twenty feet above him. The next morning, Professor McGonagall asked him to stop by her office after lunch.

—

"You're _joking_."

In Harry's absence, Hermione and Neville had joined Harry's other roommates for a game of Exploding Snap. It was Ron Weasley who'd spoken.

"There hasn't been a first year on a House team since 1905!" Hermione said.

"He was a midseason replacement, though," Harry said. "Wood said the last time a player was as young as me was in 1892."

Neville offered his congratulations, and Seamus, Dean and Hermione echoed it. Ron sat there and gaped.

"Wood saw me diving to catch my keys during our lesson. Said he'd never seen anything like it. He's going to teach me the rules tomorrow."

"You don't even know the _rules_ of Quidditch?" Ron asked, astonished.

"I grew up in the Muggle world. I'd never even flown before our lesson."

"Merlin, you're going to need a lot of training!" Ron said.

"Wood said we have three practices a week."

"Well, if you want to get in any more than that, I'm always up for a fly," he offered, a bit nervously.

Harry looked levelly at him. All he really knew about Ron was that he was a Boy Who Lived fan and that at least three of his brothers had been on the Gryffindor team. He was probably offering so that he could get on friendly terms with his hero—and in return, he would probably be able to help improve Harry's Quidditch skills.

And Harry could probably use the help. He had jumped at the offer to join the team not only because it offered a chance to fly frequently—something that he definitely enjoyed—but also because it could make him more popular in the House. Harry had been watching, and though he knew that everyone would have liked the Weasley twins regardless, the other four players were also well-regarded.

Of course, being on the team would only be a benefit if he played well, and he'd long since learned that you only acquired a skill with practice. He would need a lot of it.

And it'd be helpful to be on better terms with the boy who slept two beds away from him.

"Thanks," he told Ron. "I might take you up on that."

—

In the next few weeks, Harry grew very busy. Between homework, Quidditch practices, extra flying with Ron Weasley (both of them on the new school brooms), and practicing with his throwing knives, his free time was shrinking rapidly. He also made a point of partnering with Neville in Potions, where he served as a lightning rod for Snape's vitriol, and even spent some time in the Gryffindor common room with Ron. (If Ron wanted to be associated with the Boy Who Lived, Harry figured, it didn't cost much to stay on his good side.)

A couple weeks after he joined the team, a whole parliament of owls carried in an odd, oblong package and set it in front of Harry. There was a note attached, which thankfully Harry read before opening the package. It seemed Professor McGonagall had wrangled an exception so Harry could get a more competitive broom.

Harry quickly passed the note around to Hermione, Neville, and Ron.

"A Nimbus Two Thousand!" Ron moaned, a little loud for Harry's tastes. "I've never even touched one!"

"I'll let you try it out next time we fly," Harry promised. The three boys decided to run the package up to Gryffindor Tower, but Hermione simply frowned and told them to go on without her.

They quickly ran into a jealous Draco Malfoy, who tried to snatch away the package, but Harry was quicker, and whacked him across the hands with the still-wrapped handle. Malfoy tried to complain to Flitwick—both about the hit and the package—but Flitwick had seen the entire incident and already knew the broom was coming.

The three boys ran the broom up to Gryffindor Tower, where Harry carefully unwrapped it and put it in his trunk, then they headed to Transfiguration.

—

As September turned into October and October lurched towards November, Hermione grew snappy. Harry tried to ask about it a couple of times, but the resulting conversations were less than productive.

The best of them was the time she simply denied anything had changed. The worst was when she suddenly started questioning him about where he kept sneaking off to. It was a question he couldn't afford to answer—Hermione, Harry had noticed, idolized the teachers; even when she hadn't been so moody, he doubted their friendship would have stopped her from reporting him.

Eventually, as Halloween approached, Harry resigned himself to the idea that whatever was bothering her, Hermione would have to come to him if she wanted help.

Her continuous conflicts with Ron Weasley probably didn't make things any better. The two were polar opposites—Ron thought she was barmy for studying so hard; Hermione thought he was empty-headed for not reading more than he had to. Once Ron even called Hermione a know-it-all, but a sharp glare from Harry silenced any further insults.

It all came to a head on Halloween. Everyone was excited to try the Hover Charm for the first time; Professor Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice. Harry ended up with Seamus Finnigan, but Hermione ended up with Ron. It was hard to tell which of them was more annoyed by this. They'd rowed just this morning about the (disgusting, Harry had to say) way Ron ate; now they were being forced to work together.

"It's Wing-_gar_-dium Levi-_o_-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long."

"You do it, then, if you're so clever," Ron snarled.

She did, of course. Harry smiled at her, but she seemed distracted by Ron's growl.

Ron held back his rant until they left class. "It's no wonder no one can stand her—she's a nightmare, honestly."

Someone pushed back Harry. It was Hermione—and she was in tears. Harry called after her, but she kept running.

Harry grabbed the front of Ron's robes and pulled him into the next corridor, ignoring his yelp, and stood eye to eye with him. He regarded him for a long moment.

"You know, Ron, I like you," Harry said. "You're a decent bloke most of the time, you're fun to spend time with, and you're teaching me all sorts of useful stuff about Quidditch."

"Er, thanks, Harry," Ron said bemusedly.

Harry shoved him against the stone wall. Ron's eyes widened. "You're also a tremendous git to my best friend. You make fun of her, you pick fights with her, you belittle her when she's only trying to help you."

Harry's eyes narrowed and he stepped a little closer, his knuckles cracking around the fistful of Ron's robe. Ron gulped audibly.

"I don't like that, Ron. I don't like it when people are nasty to my friends. You're not going to do that anymore, are you?"

"N-no," Ron said.

Harry gave him a glare that rivaled Professor Snape. "And you're going to apologize to Hermione before Transfiguration, aren't you?" Harry asked.

"Ye-ye-yes, sir," Ron gibbered.

"See that you do," Harry growled. He released Ron's robes, and walked off. "Come on," Harry tossed airily over his shoulder, "we don't want to be late to Transfiguration."

—

But Hermione wasn't at Transfiguration. Nor was she seen all afternoon, nor even at the Halloween Feast. When Harry overheard Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown say she was crying in a girl's bathroom, he glared at Ron again. Ron cringed and sat between Seamus and Dean.

The decorations were splendid, but whenever Harry looked at them, all he could think of was Hermione sobbing in a little wooden cubicle. Still, he needed to eat; he'd just save something for her in a napkin, he decided. But he'd barely had time to grab a jacket potato before Professor Quirrell burst through the doors.

"Troll—in the dungeons—thought you ought to know."

Pandemonium broke out before he hit the floor. Dumbledore swiftly controlled the panic and ordered the prefects to lead the students back to their dormitories.

_But not all the students_, Harry realized. _Not Hermione._

It wasn't hard to find his target. "Percy, there's a prob—"

"Nothing to worry about," Percy interrupted. "Just stick with the other first years and follow me!"

"But Percy—"

"Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me—"

Harry groaned. He couldn't see any teachers either through the masses of students streaming towards the doors of the Great Hall. He'd have to wait for the Hall to clear so he could talk to the teachers.

Quickly, he adopted relatively relaxed body language—_just another worried but not panicked student_, he tried to say,_ nothing to see here._ He stayed with the group of first years, but drifted towards the back, towards the Gryffindor table's benches. It wasn't difficult—everyone else was trying to get out, to stay near Percy, and they were all too ready to slip around him. The group rounded the end of the Gryffindor table, heading for the door to the Great Hall, and Harry quickly ducked beneath the table, reached into his mokeskin pouch, and withdrew his Invisibility Cloak. He draped it over himself and crouched. A moment later, the Great Hall was empty.

Unfortunately, that included the teachers, save the unconscious Professor Quirrell.

Damn.

"—keep an eye on the stone." It was Dumbledore's voice, echoing faintly from the Entrance Hall. Harry hustled in that direction, but Gryffindor was furthest from the door.

"Yes, Headmaster," Snape's voice said. Then Harry heard the sound of feet on stairs.

By the time he reached the Entrance Hall, though, the other teachers were already gone, and Harry had no idea which direction. Only Snape was visible, climbing the grand staircase to the first floor, wand in hand.

Harry briefly considered telling Snape—but Snape would be even less likely to listen to him than Percy. He'd have to get Hermione himself.

Harry ran toward the staircase, confident in the Invisibility Cloak's stealth, but Snape turned at the noise of Harry's steps. Harry stopped short and held his breath. He'd never used the Cloak in a quiet place before—only in noisy, relatively crowded spaces like Diagon Alley. He hadn't even thought about the sounds he must be making!

After a moment, Snape seemed to decide that he'd heard an echo and began climbing again. Harry followed him, twenty paces behind, making an effort to move more slowly and quietly.

Snape kept going up, but Harry finally reached Hermione's floor, so he took a right and, the moment he felt he was far enough from Snape, stuffed the Cloak back into his mokeskin pouch. He palmed a throwing knife in each hand and started running.

He smelled it first: a mixture of old socks and raw sewage. Then he heard its footfalls.

Then he heard Hermione's scream.

Harry ran flat-out, skidding to a halt in a ruin.

The cubicles had all been knocked flat, and half the sinks were broken; water was fountaining from the end of a pipe. Hermione was huddled in a corner, staring up with wide eyes. And the troll—it was twelve feet tall, with legs thick as tree trunks, gray, lumpy skin, and a tiny head with a bulbous nose. Harry had never seen something that looked so dangerous, and that was without the club raised in its hand.

Even as his lizard brain screamed a warning, though, he didn't let himself hesitate. Information he had read many times, studied over and over so that it would be ready in his mind when he needed it, came to him:

_Heart. 3.5 inches below the skin. Loss of consciousness instantaneous, death in three seconds. Thrust well in with the point, taking care when attacking from behind not to go too high or you will strike the shoulder blade._

With a practiced flick, he slipped the knife blade between his fingers and flung it at the troll, _wanting it to hit_ where the book's diagram had shown him. The knife spun in midair before sinking into the troll's back to the hilt with a wet _thwack_.

The troll bellowed. Blood flowed around the wound, but not nearly enough. It whirled around, swinging its club down towards Harry. His eyes widened and he hastily sidestepped it.

Hermione screamed, and the troll turned again to face her. It took two steps toward her. Harry lightly tossed the second throwing knife from his left hand to his right.

_The book was old, the diagram was small, maybe I was a little low…_

He flung the blade again, _willing it to hit_ a rib or two above the other, and as always, it struck true—but to no more effect than before. The troll roared, turning back to Harry, and swung its club down toward him again. Harry jumped aside to dodge it.

It should have worked! The throwing knives were four inches long, and the heart wasn't that deep…

_In a human_, Harry realized with not a small amount of internal swearing. The troll was twice the size of a human—and who knew what else was different about its anatomy?

Harry now found himself against a wall, the troll looming over him. Terror welled up in him, and he barely wrestled it down. Between the troll's legs, he could see Hermione, her eyes wide as the troll raised its club for another blow...

"Distract it! Scream again!" he yelled to Hermione.

She needed little prompting to scream bloody murder. Once again, the troll whirled around, taking a few steps toward her.

Harry reached back into his pocket, this time withdrawing a much larger blade: his F-S Fighting Knife. He gripped it between his teeth, then took a running leap onto the troll's back.

The troll roared again and twisted its shoulders back and forth, trying to fling Harry off itself. Harry was barely holding on by one hand around its neck. He felt wildly with his other hand and feet, trying to find some purchase, and his left foot landed on top of the knives already in the troll's back. He pushed up—the troll let out an earsplitting bellow and actually dropped its club—and managed to lift himself onto the troll's shoulders.

The instructions came to him.

_Carotid artery. 1.5 inches below the skin. Knife in right hand, edges parallel to the ground—_

He grabbed the knife in his right hand, holding the blade flat, next to the side of the troll's neck.

—_seize opponent around the neck from behind with your left arm, pulling his head to the left._

Harry grabbed the troll's bulbous nose, wrenching its head to the left.

_Thrust point well in—_

Harry stabbed the dagger deep into the troll's neck. It let out a pained whimper.

—_then cut sideways._

Harry cut. The blood didn't just gush over the blade and his hand and the leg he'd slung over its shoulder, it actually sprayed over the wreckage of the toilet cubicles.

_Loss of consciousness in five seconds—_

Harry slipped down off the troll's shoulders, hitting the ground lightly as it sank to its knees. Then the troll fell forward, its face hitting the splintered remains of a cubicle door.

—_death in twelve seconds._

The troll didn't get up again.

Harry looked to Hermione. "Are you okay?"

She flung herself at him, holding him like she would never let go.

Harry dropped the bloody dagger and wrapped his arms around her tightly, stroking her hair as she sobbed into his shoulder. Soon, though, he began to shake and his legs turned to jelly; he sank to his knees in the pink-tinged water that was beginning to flood the bathroom.

"T-that'll be adrenaline withdrawal," Hermione said tearfully, rubbing his back. "It's a totally normal response to a life or d-d-death situation."

Harry nodded mutely; his head was pounding. The two of them clung to each other tightly.

Distantly, Harry heard something slamming and loud footsteps. A moment later, Professor McGonagall burst into the room, closely followed by Snape and Quirrell. The Defense Professor gasped and stared around the room with wide eyes, leaning back against the wall.

"What on earth were you thinking of?" said Professor McGonagall furiously.

Harry cut her off, climbing to his feet, an arm still around Hermione. "What on earth were _you_ thinking of? The teachers ordered the students out of the Great Hall without doing a head count. None of you knew that Hermione wasn't at the feast!"

McGonagall was shocked.

"I came here to warn her, but the troll got here first. I had no choice—I had to kill it."

"And how did you do that?" McGonagall asked.

"I believe I can answer that question," Snape said. Floating before him was Harry's bloody dagger.

McGonagall stared at Harry for a long time. Finally, she asked, "And where did _that_ come from?"

"I always carry weapons," Harry said, rubbing his aching head.

"_Why?_" McGonagall asked.

"Because it keeps my uncle and aunt from trying to beat the magic out of me," Harry snapped. Hermione gasped; Quirrell sank to the floor with a splash; McGonagall went very still.

There was a long silence. A silence that spiraled horribly. He had not meant to say that—not in front of stern Professor McGonagall, not in front of Hermione, _never_ in front of an enemy like—

"There are two more knives in the troll's back," Snape said. His voice was smooth as silk, but there was something odd in his expression. "Just how many weapons do you carry, Potter?"

"I—"

"Turn out your pockets, Potter," Snape said, staring into his eyes.

Harry withdrew the other throwing knife and gave it to McGonagall, glad that at least they couldn't search his mokeskin pouch—

"The mokeskin pouch, too," Snape said.

Harry's eyes widened in astonishment. He reached into the pouch and withdrew the collapsible knife he'd bought two months before in Diagon Alley.

"Thank you," McGonagall said as she took the knife. "We'll return these before you next board the Express. I don't want to see them at Hogwarts again."

"But—Professor! I need them!" Harry said.

"You most certainly do not," McGonagall said, nostrils flaring. "Carrying weapons is not only against school rules, it's a _blatant_ danger to the students and staff."

"And if I hadn't had them today? What do you suppose would have happened?" Hermione began trembling against him.

"That's quite beside the—"

"HERMIONE WOULD BE DEAD!" Harry yelled.

"Be that as it may—"

Hermione whimpered and slipped out of Harry's grasp, running from the room. Harry made to follow her.

"Potter, I'm not finished—"

"Your tantrum is not the most important thing in this castle, Deputy Headmistress," Harry said sharply. Then he ran after Hermione.

—

Harry found her sitting at the top of the grand staircase. He sat on her right. Neither spoke for a few moments.

"I could have died tonight, Harry."

"I know," he said.

"I could have died. And the teachers wouldn't have cared. The students wouldn't have. Nobody in this entire c-country…"

"I would have cared."

Hermione shook her head. "You have other friends—Neville—Ron—Fred and George—the Quidditch team—"

"Is that what's been going on the last few weeks?" Harry asked.

Hermione swallowed, but nodded mutely.

"Hermione, I'm always going to have other friends. Probably even more than I do now. But I only have one best friend, and you're it."

"I-I am?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah," Harry said. "I told Ron that when I yelled at him for hurting your feelings."

Hermione gave a sort of watery chuckle.

"Two months ago," Harry said, "I decided I was keeping you, and that's what I'm going to do."

Hermione leaned into his shoulder, and Harry wrapped his arm around her back, and they sat there for a while.

At length, Hermione asked, "Where were you sneaking off to, anyway?"

Harry chuckled. "Knife practice. I thought you'd disapprove."

"I would have. It'd be a bit hypocritical of me now, though," Hermione said. "Harry...can you teach me how to fight?"

He turned towards her, looking at her seriously. "It took me years of study. Practice every day. Athleticism you might not possess. I even use a little wandless magic. I don't know if I can teach it all."

"Please, Harry," she said.

"And you have to be willing to do what it takes to protect yourself. Even if it takes a bloody mess. Even if it puts you in more danger. Even if it means hurting someone. Even if it means killing."

"I will." She took his hand. "I don't want to cower in a corner again."

He looked at her for a moment before finally saying, "Okay."

She smiled—rather tiredly, he thought, but that was understandable. "We should get to Gryffindor Tower."

"Probably," Harry said, and they started off together, hand in bloodied hand.

—

When two first-year students stepped into the Gryffindor common room, one with a few spots of dried blood here and there, the other with about half his body caked in the stuff, everyone stopped talking and eating and just stared.

It was Neville who broke the silence. "Harry! Hermione! Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Harry said.

"What happened?" one of the Weasley twins—George, Harry guessed—asked.

"The troll found Hermione," Harry said tiredly. "Then I found the troll."

There was a long silence. Everyone gaped.

"I think I need a shower," Harry finally said. "Save me a jacket potato, will you?"

When he came back down fifteen minutes later, the jacket potatoes were untouched.

—

**A/N**: The knife fighting information is from W.E. Fairbairn's book _All-In Fighting_, which is essentially a manual for fighting people who mean to kill you. (Fairbairn is also the 'F' in the F-S Fighting Knife that Harry used to kill the troll.) Harry long ago bullied Vernon into getting him a copy.


	8. Chapter 8: The Fall

If I owned Harry Potter, I would actually be able to write Hagrid's accent.

**Chapter Eight  
****The Fall****  
**

With some careful maneuvering, the Hogwarts Professors might have salvaged Hermione's admiration. Instead, Professor McGonagall decided to do something else.

It was the busiest part of breakfast, and the Great Hall was louder than usual, buzzing with rumors about the troll, rumors that were even more outlandish than usual. The strangest and most persistent of all were that the Boy-Who-Lived and another girl had stumbled into the Gryffindor Common Room an hour after the evacuation, covered in blood. Though nearly all of the Gryffindors insisted they'd seen it themselves, the other Houses remained skeptical—a pair of first years, taking on a troll?

This was when Professor McGonagall rose to her feet and clinked a spoon against her goblet. "Mr. Potter," she said once the hubbub died down, "please approach the head table."

Hermione shot him a worried look, but he touched her shoulder and walked the length of the Hall to stand in front of McGonagall.

McGonagall regarded him sternly for a long moment before she spoke. "Last night, you disobeyed a direct order from the Headmaster, an order made for your own safety. You were caught with not one, not even two, but _five_ very dangerous, prohibited weapons. You behaved insubordinately to professors and left in the middle of a conversation when you knew you were likely to be punished. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Harry glanced towards Dumbledore's golden throne; the aged wizard regarded him gravely. He turned back to McGonagall. "I know I broke a lot of school rules, but I believe every single thing I did last night was the right thing to do."

"I see," McGonagall said, lips thinning. "Mr. Potter, as punishment for the aforementioned actions, fifty points will be docked from Gryffindor." The Gryffindor table gasped. "You will sit detentions each night from seven to nine until Christmas break, save those nights when you have other school obligations during those times. If a teacher finds you with dangerous contraband again, expect to be suspended or expelled. Do you understand?"

Harry gritted his teeth and opened his mouth to reply, but Hermione spoke first. "You're going to punish him for saving my life?" she shouted.

"Sit down, Miss Granger," McGonagall snapped. Hermione started to reply, but Harry caught her eye and shook his head minutely. She slowly sunk back into her seat.

"I understand, Professor," Harry said.

"Your trunk and dormitory will be searched this morning; if we find any other weapons, I may increase this punishment. You will not return to Gryffindor Tower before lunch. You are dismissed."

Harry returned to his now-cold eggs. The other students took much longer to return to their gossip.

But the juiciest rumor in Hogwarts since Professor Blake had been found in a broom cupboard with three fifth-year boys had just been confirmed.

And as for Hermione...

"I cannot _believe_ that...that...that parochial, pedantic, sophistic, draconian harridan!" she told Harry, staring mutinously at McGonagall.

During the next few weeks, the teachers noticed a marked decrease in Hermione's class participation, but they assumed it was a temporary result of her traumatic experience. Gradually, it became the new normal.

They never realized what they'd lost.

—

"Did you notice Snape was limping?" Neville asked as they came up the stairs after Potions that day.

"Yes," Hermione said. "He looked like he was moving stiffly last night, didn't he?" Hermione said.

"Snape wasn't with the other teachers," Harry said. "They went down into the dungeons to find the troll, I think, but he went up the stairs alone."

Neville frowned. "Why would he do that?"

"I overheard Dumbledore ordering him to guard a 'stone'," Harry said as they sat in the middle of the Gryffindor table.

"Stone? What stone?" Hermione asked.

"He didn't say," Harry said, reaching for a dish of potatoes, but he frowned when he missed the serving spoon.

He glanced over and the dish was empty. _Must've not been paying attention,_ he decided, and reached for a plate of sandwiches.

"But it sounded like they both knew what he—" Once again, his hand met nothing but air. He looked up, and frowned as he noticed the plate was empty. It hadn't been like that before, had it?

This time, Harry watched as he reached for a steak and kidney pie, but the pie vanished a moment before he touched the plate.

"What…?" He glanced up and down the table, and spotted an older, bigger boy with a wand in his hand. Harry reached for a platter of steaks, keeping an eye on the boy; sure enough, the other boy flicked his wand, and the steaks vanished, reappearing on another platter further down the table.

Harry reached for his own wand and pointed it at one of the steaks, incating "_Wingardium Leviosa._" The steak lifted off the patter and floated down the table, landing on Harry's plate. The other boy glared; Harry gave him a cheeky grin and dug in.

After a lunch which was thankfully free of any more disappearing food, Harry, Hermione and Neville left the Great Hall. They turned at footsteps behind them to find Ron trying to catch up.

"Erm...hey," he said.

Hermione glared at him and Harry regarded him levelly, but Neville offered a polite "Hello."

"Hermione…" Ron scuffed his toe against the flagstones. "Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?"

"Alright," she said guardedly, and they headed off into a corridor for some privacy.

"What's that about?" Neville asked.

"Hermione was in the loo last night because Ron insulted her," Harry explained. "I...encouraged him to apologize."

"Right," Neville said skeptically.

It was about that time that Snape walked down the grand staircase. "Potter," he said, "a word."

Harry sighed. "Yes, Professor?"

"Your dormitory has been searched and no further..._contraband_ has been found," Snape said. "I must admit, I was surprised. If you had so little sense that you'd carry five knives in your pockets, I thought you'd have more."

Harry usually tried to avoid lying directly, but he knew how to do it. The trick was to temporarily make yourself believe that the lie is the truth, and then to behave exactly as you would if you were being honest. So he quickly constructed the fiction in his mind, then met Snape's eyes, just as he would if he were telling the truth. "I have no need for any others, sir. I only carried that many because three of them were designed to be thrown; otherwise, two would have sufficed."

Snape regarded him with a raised eyebrow for a long moment; Harry held the idea that he had no other knives fixed in his mind. After a moment, Snape said, "Designed to be thrown?"

"Throwing knives is a sort of...not sport, exactly, but a recreational skill among Muggles. It's usually done for show, but it can be useful at times."

"Trust a Potter to grandstand even in combat," Snape snorted. "Suffice to say, Potter, I'm not going to take your word on this—you might have anticipated the search and removed them from your trunk. Turn out your pockets."

Harry did, but he wasn't carrying anything against the rules.

"And your mokeskin pouch?"

"No, sir," Harry said truthfully. "Just a family heirloom in there—nothing dangerous."

"I see," he said, and held out his hand. "Your bag."

Harry swung it off his shoulder and watched as Snape rifled through it. After a moment, he withdrew Harry's Potions kit and popped it open. His silver Potions knife was inside.

"Tut, tut, Potter," Snape said. "That will be another ten points. At this rate, Gryffindor might run out before dinner…"

Harry's jaw tightened. This had been the point all along, hadn't it? Snape wasn't looking for weapons; he was looking for excuses.

"Sir, a Potions knife is standard school equipment—"

"But given your…_history_ with such objects, you should not be carrying one for a moment longer than necessary. You should have returned it to your dormitory immediately after class."

_But I wasn't allowed to return to my dormitory_, Harry didn't say. Snape would just take points for talking back. "I understand, _sir,"_ Harry ground out.

"Good," Snape said, and gave Harry's bag back. "That will be all." And he headed towards the dungeons, robes billowing behind him.

"Git," Harry said once he was out of earshot.

"Who's a git?" Ron asked as he and Hermione returned. Hermione looked somewhat mollified; Ron must have made a decent apology.

"Snape," Neville said. "He took points off Harry for carrying his Potions knife."

"Git," Hermione said, and Neville and Ron gave her shocked looks. Harry grinned at her.

"Come on," Harry said, "Snape said I'm cleared to enter the Tower again. I'm hip-deep in homework right now; I should get some of it out of the way."

Gryffindor Tower, though, was only marginally friendlier to Harry than Snape's classroom. The boy playing keep-away with the food at lunch was only the first incident of the day. All afternoon, Gryffindors glared at Harry, whispered when he was in sight, and bumped into him on purpose. Two different girls spilled ink on his homework; a sixth-year boy even tripped him as he was heading out the portrait hole to his detention. Honestly, by the time he left the Common Room, he was glad to be shot of the place.

And so after two hours spent scrubbing at his own bloody shoe prints under Flich's supervision, Harry found himself venting to Hermione instead of reading his Defense assignment. "They're all angry with me, but they don't even really know what happened—just what McGonagall said."

Hermione tapped the end of her quill on the desk they were sharing. "Well, what if we told them?" she suggested.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

She told him. Then they went to find a prefect. Percy wasn't amenable, but his female counterpart was willing to listen.

And so the next morning, after a grueling Quidditch practice, a shower in the locker room, and another search by Snape, Harry found Hermione waiting for him beside the Fat Lady's portrait.

"Everyone's inside, Harry. They're waiting for you."

He ran a hand through his hair. "I hope you're right about this," he said.

"Me too," Hermione admitted.

"After we're done, give me half an hour and come on up to my dormitory, all right? Knock on the door before you enter. Then we'll do our first training session."

"Okay," she said.

"Pig snout," Harry said to the Fat Lady, and they entered.

The Common Room was packed. Nearly every Gryffindor was there, in chairs and on couches, leaning against walls and standing up straight. Most of them looked none too friendly. They seemed to be facing the fireplace, so Harry and Hermione cut through the crowd to stand there.

"Thanks for coming, everyone," he said. "I'm afraid I dug a bit of a hole for us"—there was some mutinous muttering—"and I thought my House deserved to at least know why."

Everyone at least looked curious at this. It was a start, he supposed.

"It all started during dinner last night. Hermione wasn't there, and I'd heard that she was in one of the girl's loos. She didn't know the troll was loose. I couldn't get P—a prefect's attention, and I couldn't see any of the teachers, so I stayed behind in the Great Hall…"

And so Harry told the whole story, editing it only lightly to avoid mentioning the Invisibility Cloak. When he mentioned throwing a knife at the troll's back, Seamus broke in.

"Wait a minute, you had a knife?"

"I carry several different knives and daggers," Harry said. "Or at least I did until McGonagall took them."

"Why?"

"The, er, place I live…it isn't very safe," he said uncomfortably. "I have to carry knives to keep…people from hurting me. I've never really attacked anyone with one of my knives; just drawing it is usually enough. Knives need no demonstrations."

"There are places like that?" Seamus asked curiously.

"Yeah, my neighborhood's pretty rough, too," Dean said. "I'd carry a knife there if I could get my hands on one."

"Why did you keep carrying them when you were at Hogwarts, though?" Angelina Johnson, his Quidditch teammate, asked.

"I…" He looked down at the ground and adjusted his glasses on his nose, trying to decide how to approach this. "When Voldemort—really, people, it's just a word, not a curse—when he attacked my parents, they were unarmed. Defenseless. I don't ever want to make the same mistake."

Nobody knew how to respond to that, so after a moment, he continued the story. When he got to the part where he stabbed the troll's neck, the boy from lunch the previous day scoffed. "Jumped on a troll's back and slit its throat? Are we supposed to believe this tripe?"

Harry stared at the boy for a long moment. He was either a large second year or a small third year, though Katie Bell's presence behind the couch he was lounging on suggested the former. The silence was finally broken by the most unlikely person.

"W-where d'you think the blood came from, then?" Neville said. "We all saw it Thursday night."

"He messed around with some knives, and cut himself, and McGonagall caught him, and he mouthed off," the boy said. "And he's lying to the whole House now to cover his arse."

Harry narrowed his eyes and was about to reply scathingly, but George cut across him from the back of the common room. "He can't have, McLaggen."

"We all showered after practice this morning," Fred said.

"He didn't have a cut on him, 'cept the obvious head wound," George continued.

"So he went to Pomfrey and she fixed him up," this McLaggen said.

"But she didn't clean up the blood?" Hermione said. "I was there—I saw the whole thing. It went as Harry said."

"Yeah, you would say that," McLaggen said.

"What?"

"I've heard about you, you know. Following Potter around like an eager puppy. His little pet Muggle."

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but Harry got there first. "You'll want to be careful there, McLaggen," he said coldly. "Last time something had a go at Hermione, it ended up bleeding out in a girls' loo."

McLaggen's eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening me?"

Harry made an educated guess about McLaggen. "I'm just saying, some people are just talk, and some people aren't. The first type ought to be careful of the second."

McLaggen lunged for Harry, reaching for his wand, but Katie Bell grabbed his shoulders and forced him back down. "Sit down and shut up, you bloody berk."

McLaggen glowered, but stayed put.

"Cheers, Katie," Harry said. "Now, for the rest…" He glanced at Hermione uncertainly.

"Oh! Er...well, the teachers came a moment later," Hermione said. "McGonagall started scolding Harry for rescuing me, and…"

"She sort of implied that the Hogwarts rules were more important than Hermione's life."

Hermione was looking the floor. "I couldn't stand to be in that room any longer. I ran."

"And I followed her," Harry said, "ignoring McGonagall's instructions to stay."

Harry looked over the assembled Gryffindors. They were silent.

"I'm not sorry for what I did, but I _am_ sorry that Gryffindor got hurt because of it. I'll try to pick up points where I can, but I doubt I'll make up the whole deficit, and I'm sorry about that." He paused and cracked a smile. "Besides, at the rate Hermione earns points, we'd be worse off if she were out for a month."

"_Harry!"_ she said, and smacked his arm. But she had an oddly pleased smile on her face, too.

"I won't take up any more of your time. Thanks for listening." And with that, the crowd started to break up. Percy and a group of fifth years headed for the portrait hole; McLaggen started to lift himself off the couch; the Weasley twins headed for the boys' dormitory stairs. Harry made a beeline for the twins, but stopped when he heard Hermione speak.

"By the way, McLaggen?"

"Yeah?"

Hermione raised her wand. "_Petrificus Totalus!_"

McLaggen's entire body suddenly went stiff as a board, and he fell forward on his face. Several people laughed. It was an impressive bit of magic; Harry didn't know Hermione was that far ahead.

"You'd best remember that I'm a _witch_, not a Muggle."

Harry grinned at her, then headed up the stairs. He caught up to the Weasley twins a floor up. "George, George, I have a proposition for you two."

The twins looked at each other. "Didn't Mum tell us not to listen to propositions from boys?" one of them said.

"No, she told Ginny that," the other one said. "She never said it to us."

"Okay," the first twin shrugged. "Why not?"

The two of them followed Harry into his dormitory. "I have a magical object you'd probably be able to put to good use," Harry said. "The problem is, I don't really know how to use it properly without getting caught. I suspect there are some spells that could help. I'd be willing to let you borrow it occasionally if you'd figure it out and teach me what to do."

The twins looked at each other again for a long moment, seeming to have a silent conversation. Finally, the one on the left said, "We could probably do that, depending on what this 'object' is."

Harry reached into his mokeskin pouch, and they gasped as he drew out his Invisibility Cloak.

Once they'd finished bowing and scraping and retreated to their room with the Cloak for some heavy-duty plotting, Harry closed the door and opened his trunk's library compartment. He inverted _Beedle the Bard_ and the shelves slid down, revealing an empty portrait.

"Grandmother? Grandfather?" Harry called.

Charlus peaked around the edge of the frame. "Harry, is that you?"

"Yeah."

"I heard voices yesterday. What was that about?"

"I got into a bit of trouble, and the teachers searched my trunk…" Harry quickly explained the events of the previous night.

"You're all right, though?" Dorea asked.

"Yes, Grandmother," Harry answered.

"And your friend is fine too?"

"Yes, Grandmother," Harry said again, with a hint of irritation.

"Good." She smacked Charlus's shoulder. "This is all _your_ fault, you know. No Black ever did something so reckless, and the Evanses were such a gentle couple…"

"What about Sirius?" Charlus said.

"Only after spending years with a _Potter_," Dorea said, spitting out the name like a curse.

"You spent decades with me," Charlus pointed out.

"And I didn't faint dead away when I heard that my grandson jumped on a troll's back and slit its throat," Dorea retorted. "You Potters have obviously led me astray, too." She turned back to Harry. "Please, honey, please be careful. You're the last Potter. Don't end up being the _last_ Potter."

"I understand, Grandmother," Harry said with a sad smile. "I need to get into the compartment—Hermione asked me to teach her how to fight."

Dorea shook her head ruefully. "Another perfectly sensible person swept up the family madness," she said as the portrait clicked and swung open.

The compartment contained only a few items: the nude photos, the illegal charms book, and the remainder of Harry's knife collection. He left his butterfly knife (and its blunt trainer) in the compartment—it was too difficult for him to throw accurately, too intricate for Hermione to learn quickly, and frankly too showy for a situation where they'd only be pulling the knives if they needed to use them. For Hermione, he chose a combat knife with a fixed black blade, laminated canvas handle and perfect balance for throwing. That left him using his very first knife—a black folding utility knife. The balance was too far forward and the blade was designed more for wood than flesh, but he knew it very well. It was also responsible for a wicked scar across Vernon's chest, which was a nice plus.

Harry heard a knock on the door. "Just a minute!" he said. He quickly extracted his selections, closed the portrait, bookcase, and trunk, and crossed to the door. Hermione was waiting when he opened it.

"Come in," he said, and he closed the door behind her.

She glanced at his hands, still holding the knives. "I should've known you'd have more," she said with a hint of amusement. "We're not going to do this here, are we?"

"No," Harry said, "I have another place for that. The problem is, Snape's been searching me every chance he gets." He looked into her eyes. "I'll need you to carry these."

Hermione bit her lip for a moment, but when she took the knives and said "Sure," it was with conviction.

The two of them headed down to the common room and through the portrait hole, and Hermione followed Harry to the abandoned corridor he'd found. He showed he around (she seemed particularly interested in the anatomical dummies), then they sat down in the classroom.

"Okay, this is the knife you'll be using. The blade and the handle should be obvious enough. The metal part that extends from the blade and runs through the handle is called the tang…"

"...and the point on the pommel is for breaking glass, sir," Hermione finished half an hour later.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"That...that is the pommel, right?"

"Yes. You got it all right." _Did she not realize she said 'sir'?_ He mentally shrugged. "Now that we've covered all that, let's look at how you grip it…"

—

The talk with Gryffindor did a lot of good. Many Gryffindors' ire shifted from Harry to Professor McGonagall; nobody volunteered an answer in Harry's next Transfiguration class, and he didn't see a Gryffindor approach her at a meal or in the hallways for over a week. Not everyone was on Harry's side—Percy Weasley seemed to think the simple fact that he'd broken the rules damned him, and McLaggen didn't seem to forget Harry's insults—but it was a major improvement over being the pariah.

It helped that the first Quidditch game was growing nearer. Not only was Gryffindor's attention diverted to their rivalry with Slytherin, but Harry was their great hope to win the game. It was hard to hold a grudge against the boy you were counting on for a victory.

All this meant Harry's performance in the Quidditch game would be even more important. A win, he was sure, would bury the remaining animosity; a loss would reignite it. Wood ramped up the practices—Filch gritted his teeth, jowls quivering with indignation, when Harry told him that, for the fifth night in a row, he would not be coming to detention—and, despite the pressure, Harry woke up the morning of the game feeling like he had the Quidditch thing under control.

—

"—looks like Potter is completely out of control up there!" Lee Jordan's voice boomed through the stadium.

Harry would've sent a glare towards the commentator's box if he weren't clinging for his life to his broom, which had started zigzagging and rolling over all on its own. Then the broom jerked wildly and he was flying through the air. For a moment he flailed his arms, desperately reaching for the broom, and barely caught it by one hand.

Far, far below, in the Gryffindor stands, Hermione's end of the white bedsheet labeled _Potter for President_ fluttered down.

"Harry! Grab my hand!" The Weasley twins had arrived. Harry reached for the one who'd spoken, but yelped as the broom jerked upwards.

They made several more attempts, with no more success. Finally, Harry said, "This isn't going to work. Fred, circle a hundred feet down. George, three hundred. Be ready to catch me."

The Weasley twins looked at him with wide eyes, but they nodded and dove.

The broom was now vibrating continuously. Harry swung a little, trying to get his other hand on it, but that only loosened his hold even more.

There was nothing for it. He looked down at the Weasley twins circling below him.

"GERONIMO!" he yelled, mostly to warn them.

Then Harry let go.

Diving on his broom was always an exhilarating experience. Free fall was different. Free fall was terrifying. The wind was tearing at his robes—his heart was in his throat—he heard Fred yell, but couldn't see him—Fred's broom whipped by only a couple seconds later, far too soon, and he flailed for it, but couldn't reach it—the air was rushing by too fast for him to breathe—Fred was diving, but Harry was falling faster—George was flying to intercept him—Harry reached for the broom—his fingers wrapped around it—_YES!_—but the broom suddenly, unnaturally lurched, and the handle was wrenched out of his hand—he was tumbling—the ground was getting larger—the only thing keeping him from vomiting was the knowledge that it'd just splatter all over his own face—Fred and George were both diving, outrunning the Beater's bats they'd dropped—the crowd was screaming—his Nimbus still hung in midair—there was some sort of commotion in the teachers' section—the ground was far too close—huh, that was the Snitch above him—in the unlikely event he survived this, he'd be looking up spells for surviving long falls the moment he could walk to the library again—Fred was _right there_, yelling something he couldn't hear—

_Fred!_ he realized with a jolt. He'd caught up somehow! Harry seized Fred's wrist, and Fred grabbed Harry's, and he pulled up _hard_, and Harry flailed out with his other hand as he felt the one on Fred's wrist slip, and found purchase on the broomstick as his toes brushed the grass, and then they were in the air again, twenty, thirty, forty feet up, circling the pitch as the crowd burst into wild cheers.

"All right there, Harry?" Fred asked.

"Yeah," he said, breathing deeply, looking up at the sky above them. "We have a problem, though."

"What's that?" Fred asked.

"I've spotted the Snitch."

Fred grinned broadly. "Then what are you waiting for?"

Harry let go of Fred, gripping the broom handle with both hands, and jerked it up into a steep climb.

Harry tried to make it look like they were flying back to his Nimbus Two Thousand, but once he reached the proper altitude, he banked sharply to the right and poured on all the speed he could.

The Snitch was the first to notice their pursuit; it zigged left, then zagged down. Lee Jordan was next, twenty seconds later. "I don't believe it! Potter and Weasley are going for the Snitch!" The other Seeker, Higgs, quickly whirled around and started climbing, but he'd been caught on the other side of the pitch and a thousand feet too low.

Still, Harry couldn't quite reach the Snitch. "We're too slow!" he yelled over the howling wind.

"Well, I can't let you show me up anyway," Fred said. "Oi, George!" he yelled over his shoulder, then he threw his leg over the broom and slipped off the right side.

Even as Harry shouted wordlessly, though, George flew up about ten feet below him, and Fred landed on his brother's broom. He must've been following behind them the whole time, and Fred had known it. "Good hunting!" George yelled, and with a wave, the Weasley twins were gone.

"Right," Harry mumbled. He reversed his grip on Fred's broom and deftly pulled it into a roll that swung him up onto it, then accelerated as hard as he could.

Ten feet—five feet—the Snitch dodged, but he followed it—it accelerated, but though Fred's broom was slower than Harry's Nimbus, he still kept up—it dove, but that only made Harry faster—two feet—one—it jinked right—Harry lunged—it weaved down—he followed—it actually went up his robes—he reflexively closed his knee—and it got trapped between his calf and thigh!

Harry reached down and plucked the Snitch out of his robes, then held it up high.

—

"I don't understand, though," Harry said, looking into a very, very strong cup of Hagrid's tea. "Why did the Nimbus seize up?"

"It was Snape," Neville said.

"Rubbish," Hagrid said.

"We saw him!" Hermione insisted. "We scanned the crowd with binoculars. He had his wand on Harry and was muttering an incantation. He was jinxing Harry's broom. And then he jinxed George's broom too!"

"Maybe 'e were castin' a counter," Hagrid said. "If the one cursin' Harry was summat stronger, 'e wouldn' be able to stop 'im."

"But the jinxes stopped after I set Snape's robes on fire," Hermione said.

"After you—what?" Harry said.

"I snuck under the stands in the teachers' section and used my bluebell flame charm to set Snape's robes on fire," Hermione said sheepishly.

"Wow," Harry said. "I guess you saved my life too, then. Thanks."

Hermione blushed. "I'm only returning the favor."

"Dumbledore trusts Snape," Hagrid said.

_But why should we?_ Harry didn't say.

Neville frowned. "I guess that's true. Remember Halloween? When he asked Snape to guard that stone?"

Hagrid dropped the teapot. "How did you hear about the Philosopher's Stone?"

Hermione gasped. "He was guarding a _Philosopher's Stone_?"

Hagrid looked furious with himself.

—

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